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Incomplete description of edit warring

In the section What edit warring is, the sentence 'An edit war only arises if the situation develops into a series of back-and-forth reverts.' should be replaced by the sentence 'An edit war doesn't start until somebody remakes an edit that was undone.' or a sentence with the same meaning. Blackbombchu (talk) 04:14, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Definition of "Revert" and "Undo"

There appears to be a need for an explicit definition of the words revert and undoes in this policy.

at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Bbb23's response, we see an admin asserting that "Technically, any change, no matter how small to the text of an article, is a revert."

IMO this has some obvious flaws:

  • Am I really reverting someone if I add a new sentence to an article, without touching anything written by anyone else? That's "any change, no matter how small, to the text of an article".
  • What if you improve the meaning of the sentence I just wrote, so that it more correctly reflects the cited source? That's "any change, no matter how small, to the text of an article".

If we go through this process—which you and I might call collaborative editing—three or four times, should we be blocked for "reverting" each other in violation of 3RR? It just doesn't seem appropriate to me.

However, this definition was put forth by an admin and seems to be sincerely believed and accepted by some people.

Part of the cause for this confusion is that "reverting" is briefly defined in the lead here as "undoing", but "undoing" does not appear to be defined at all. Are you "undoing" my work if you improve a sentence that I just wrote? Is it only "undoing" if I disagree with your change?

What do you think would best address this problem? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:09, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I would be careful not to take one admin's definition of the terms (especially an admin who acknowledged they were under considerable stress at the time and may have misspoken) as any sort of consensus.
I'd like to think we don't need to actually define the word "undoing", but if the consensus is that we do, perhaps something along the lines of, "Making an edit that reverses in whole or in part changes made previously to the article by a prior editor." DonIago (talk) 19:19, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
FWIW, I've explained my thinking on the issue here. Mark Arsten (talk) 19:34, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
A "revert" is poorly defined and open to interpretation, so it's not surprising that admins respond in different ways to perceived violations. I outlined my concerns just over a month ago here. I think we should scrap the concept of a "revert" altogther, since reverting or altering another editor's edit as part of constructive editing has its place, yet it can still put you over the line as far as 3RR violations ago. The real problem edits are "redos", when an editor repeatedly reinstates an edit that has been rejected. It is a "redo" that incites edit-warring; it is a redo that breaches the spirit of the BRD cycle. Sustained "reverting" can encompass constructive editing such as refining content, but sustained "redoing" is what creates edit-war cycles. Betty Logan (talk) 19:53, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
That's a very interesting thought. Thank you for sharing it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:17, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Agree with Betty that redo-behavior is the key to edit-warring. Sometimes that is manifested as a click of the undo-button: if every time somebody adds some phrase with a particular meaning, another editor clicks undo, then we have an edit-war. There are cases where redo-behavior is permitted, but they are very rare: deletion of COPYVIO, deletion of BLPTALK violations, probably some stuff related to WP:OUTING, maybe a couple other things. But straightforward-clicking-undo isn't the only way that redo-the-revert-behavior manifests. See my posts below for some examples. Of course, *many* kinds of editing are redo-behavior, which don't involve reverts. Somebody was recently blocked, for zooming through a few hundred articles, making one change to each: replacing the flag of Hong Kong, with the flag of the PRC. They never performed a redo-behavior, in any single article. They never clicked undo. But their behavior was, is, and forever-more will be, redo-behavior: the kind that leads to edit-wars. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 14:38, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Mark's comments. As a major patroller of WP:ANEW, I evaluate each report on a case-by-case basis. Just because I gave the literal interpretation of a revert doesn't mean I block someone because they made a minor change to an article.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:38, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
May I encourage you to check a dictionary about the literal interpretation of that word? wikt:revert#Verb, especially the most relevant transitive definition (#3), is noticeably more restrictive than "any change, no matter how small". Revert is very much a concept of going back to something that previously existed. Going forward—e.g., adding a new word or new sentence—is not a reversion according to any English dictionary on this planet. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:17, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I had no idea this discussion was here. I was asking Bbb23 about this on his talk page and he was too nice to point out to me that I was missing the boat!
Anyway, I think I agree with WhatamIdoing. I would add one thing: The policy should clearly lay out the widest effective interpretation of the definition, not a narrower one. I don't think it is right to lay out the definition in a way which is interpreted by a significant proportion of reasonable editors as being narrower than how some administrators interpret the definition. This is because these reasonable editors may be breaking the rule in the judgement of an enforcing admin, even though by their reasonable reading of the policy, they do not understand why they are breaking the rule. Imagine a hypothetical 100RR: "User must make less than 100 reverts in a month." If administrators were understanding "100", as many do in scientific contexts, to have only 1 significant digit, and rounding up so that any number of reverts over 50.0 would be considered infringing, then such a policy should clarify this, as many reasonable editors would understand "100" as having 3 significant digits. Similarly here: If administrators are understanding "revert" to mean any edit to a page which was last edited by another user, then the policy should clarify this, as many reasonable editors would not understand this. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 04:21, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
  • This issue was previously discussed (see archive) with a stricter definition for 1RR (which is essentially the same as 3RR but comes on a little earlier). I don't think if two editors are collaboratively editing there is any problem, when one editor is openly reverting and claiming the same then it becomes an editwar. It is true and many editors who have been editing as a team do it without discussing everything on talk page because they get each other's edits. This is not the case with a clear edit war and looking at whether you added a completely new sentence or edited something already in the article (technically a revert). Maybe the archive can add additional perspective to the existing consensus. --lTopGunl (talk) 04:36, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Diagram, "revert"

I made a little diagram to show the relationships between the sets associated with the different definitions given. This way any one can tell me easily how I've misunderstood what they meant. A box being surrounded by another should indicate that that box represents a proper subset of the other. So A is all edits, and B is all edits minus null edits, where some null edits exist, etc.

  • A = All edits
  • B = "any change, no matter how small to the text of an article"; Bbb23 technical definition, where "text" is understood as "wikitext"
  • C = Any change to an article which was last edited by another user; charitable interpretation of Bb23's technical definition by User:QTxVi4bEMRbrNqOorWBV
  • D = "undoing the effects of one or more edits"; quoted by Mark Arsten as the "technical definition"
  • E = "undoing the effects of one or more edits, which results in the page being restored to a previous version"; definition from Help:Reverting
  • F = "any edit ... that reverses the actions of other editors, in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material." From WP:3RR; naive interpretation taken by User:QTxVi4bEMRbrNqOorWBV and others.
  • G = F minus exemptions listed at WP:3RR. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 05:54, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

The purpose of the 3RR is to address warring behavior

Focusing on "technical reverts" without any consideration of identifying warring behavior runs counter to the intent of the 3RR.

What is warring behavior? It involves destructively undoing another editor's changes without discussion. Why did I say "destructively" undoing? Because two editors collaborating to find better wording is not warring. Collaboration is a push to improve an article, with editors building off each other's changes. Warring is a push against another editor, with no attempt to discuss or build upon new changes. Consider:

  1. In an article's talk page, a user writes a voluminous explanation for a proposed change and a voluminous RfC to address conflicts. In the mainspace edit comment, the user links to the explanation and the RfC. Further, the user says "bold edit" in the edit comment, meaning, "I am inviting the WP:BRD process if you disagree."
  2. Editor A changes "some foo" to "some foo and bar". Editor B changes "some foo and bar" to "some". Editors A and B are now satisfied with this new wording. This is collaboration. Editors are making adjustments in response to each other's changes.
  3. A user does a full revert of a newcomer's edit while providing a lengthy explanation for the revert on the talk page (multiple violations of policy).

These are examples of good editing; they are the antithesis of edit warring. A user that does each of the three examples above should not be issued a warning for edit warring. This could only result in a 3RR warning if we dismiss the purpose of the 3RR, which is to address warring behavior. vzaak (talk) 18:25, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

"Technical reverts" and WP:BRD

If we're going to adopt this new "revert sense" where any edit to text, no matter how small, could be considered a technical revert, how would this affect the WP:BRD cycle? Wouldn't the B be a technical revert? Should we change it to WP:RRD? jps (talk) 19:27, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, yes, that would be the case under that definition, unless you were the only person to have edited the article before or were boldly creating the article. But I don't think that anyone is really going to accept that definition after having the time and mental energy to think it through. What we need is a definition that will really work for us, so that we're all on the same page. It might even be useful to have a {{supplement}} that gives examples, e.g., I add a sentence and you remove it: that's a revert. I add a sentence and you move it to a different place on the page: that's not a revert. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:23, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Addition of new material, aka SQL INSERT, would not be considered a revert, even in the technical sense (which I don't agree is "new" btw). Reversion of material aka SQL DELETE, is *always* a revert, in the technical sense and also in the common-sense prima facie sense. The grey area is the SQL UPDATE statements, which is what most people colloquially mean when they say "change the article" ... any kind of SQL UPDATE usually involves a modification to existing sentences, deleting and/or overwriting some things.
  Philosophically, the technical *definition* of the revert is meant to keep the deletionists from running wild; the technical *ease* of performing reverts is meant to keep the inclusionists from running wild. Adding loopholes to the revert-definition ("any change") will definitely make the wikiverse too cushy for the deletionists. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 13:01, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
I don't think that the main "arena" is deletionists vs. inclusionists. The unfortunate fact is that the nuts and bolts side (vs. the "general intent" side)of this policy is primarily used as "rules for POV warfare". During a battle, the side that can edit war without getting busted for edit warring wins and gets their material in. And if you can get someone busted for edit warring you can get rid of them and get them deprecated and increase your chance of winning. The truly innocent / better editors are the most useful ones to bust. And here we are writing the gamebook for that battle. Acknowledging this terrible reality is the first step toward fixing it. North8000 (talk) 13:20, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
74.192, you may be missing the context. What's being described as a "new definition" for a "technical revert" is quoted above. It's never been in this policy. It's a "definition" made up by a single admin. He actually did say that any change by any subsequent editor is technically a reversion. "Any change" includes SQL INSERTs as well as UPDATEs and DELETEs.
I suppose that this would be very convenient if you want to be able to block people for making more than one or two edits to the same article in one day; practically anyone editing a high-volume article could be blocked that way. But it's generally considered to be a nonsensical definition by the rest of the community. I'm not convinced that even the person who originally claimed that this was the true definition still stands by it, now that he's had time to think it over. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:22, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Proposal

I would like to propose that the policy include the following two sentences as clarification:

"A revert is not simply an edit that modifies a previous editor's contribution. A revert is specifically an action that either removes or negates a previous editor's contribution."

jps (talk) 01:57, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

This still gives a false positive in the real-life example of "public support" -> "public and scientific support" -> "support". It takes a human to understand that the last change is a compromise rather than warring. I don't think a context-free definition of revert is possible; the focus should be on whether a change indicates warring behavior. vzaak (talk) 15:41, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Well, there's another aspect to this too: "Reverting another user is not always a sign of an edit war." What I would like to encourage is a modicum of analysis. The wording as is does not imply that someone should do any analysis whatsoever. Please, propose some other wording if you can think of some. Try to keep it simple and short as that's the kind of addition likely to get more support. jps (talk) 17:33, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Let's build on that. Is this helpful?

"A revert is not simply an edit that modifies a previous editor's contribution. Reverting does not include collaborative edits that lead to accepted compromises or building consensus through direct editing. A revert is specifically an action that either removes or negates a previous editor's contribution.

Does that seem like an improvement? Can anyone improve it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:57, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
That does make the case more explicit, although one could argue that any reasonable reading of WP:EW makes it unnecessary, especially when considered alongside things like WP:EDITCONSENSUS, as you cited. The mission to fill loopholes by expanding the length of the WP:EW article may be a quixotic one, and before embarking on it perhaps we should confront the matter of whether it is necessary? I am not aware of anyone who would count constructive WP:EDITCONSENSUS collaborations as reverts, save for one exception. Significant problems should be addressed by policy, while isolated, individual problems should probably be addressed individually. In 2003, the year Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California, a senator introduced a bill that would allow a naturalized citizen to become President of the United States, a move criticized for ostensibly being about the "equal right to govern" while actually just targeting one individual. vzaak (talk) 04:12, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
The definition on the page seems to work well: "A revert means undoing the actions of another editor." SlimVirgin (talk) 00:02, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Except that some administrators are interpreting "undoing" as "modifying". This needs to be addressed. jps (talk) 05:24, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Modifying counts as a revert if the effect is to undo something that has become an issue. Everything depends on context, and if it's something that goes to AN/3RR it will hopefully be dealt with by an admin who's used to interpreting these things. On the whole, admins will tend to give the benefit of the doubt. But the essential point is that a revert undoes someone's work. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:52, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Unfortunately, when SlimVirgin says that everything depends on context, they are correct. What does it mean to "removes or negates a previous editor's contribution"? There is the obvious definition: that you deleted everything they wrote, in one of their previous edit-transactions. Some folks see that as the *only* definition. If you merely insert some text, especially some new sentence, Whatamidoing has opined that you cannot possible have changed what the previous editor wrote. "The previous sentence is false." Uh oh. Or how about: "But in the end, everything described in this paragraph turned out to be a dream sequence / big joke / pseudoscience / total nonsense". Double uh-oh.
  In real editing, rarely will you see something so clear-cut, but it can happen. More commonly, though, you will see editors in contentious articles engaging in point-counterpoint style, where one adds a sentence pro, then the other adds an adjacent sentence con. This is not necessarily bad, as long as *eventually* it resolves into a well-written exposition that describes all Reliably Sourced facts, giving the readership a clear picture of how the sources disagree, by neutrally describing that disagreement. But in the short run, the prose becomes a whiplash-risk to the readership, if they're paying close attention.
  I guess my main problem with the bare formulation as "removes or negates" is that it should not apply only to the glyphs... it should apply to the intended *meaning* to include the connotations. Edit-warring can be subtle; most isn't just is-not / is-too / is-not / is-too. Collaborative editing, where editors work towards consensus in real-time, via mainspace revisions and edit-summaries, is a Good Thing. But tendentious editing, where editors (alone or in groups sharing the same content-goals) gradually erode away the previously-intended meaning, gradually chip away at Reliably Sourced phrases to downplay them, bury them in their opposites, or just outright wipe them... those are all Bad Things... and there may not *be* a clear unambiguous zero-false-positives rule which can hope to distinguish the two styles, rigidly and explicitly.
  If we give some inflexible definition of revert, and insist admins *only* follow that definition, ever, then methinks we open the doors to gaming the system. Almost any firm definition will have loopholes, subject to wikiLawyering, that permit meaning-reverts... which cannot be called reverts any longer, due to the strict definition! But this is a double-edged sword. If we stick with our current fuzzy definition, where a revert is context-dependent and path-dependent and the admin has to use their judgment, people will complain that admins are corrupt, and feel they were treated unfairly, because quite frankly they *will* have been treated unfairly, any fuzzy system which depends on the sheriff to Do The Right Thing is subjective by definition. I'm not sure what reform of the system we might need... but calls for rigid definitions rigidly enforced, are directly in conflict with pillar five, and probably also pillar four. HTH. — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 03:24, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Actually, I've opined nothing of the sort. Adding a new sentence, "The previous sentence is false", is covered by QT's last sentence, which I think is quite good: "A revert is specifically an action that either removes or negates a previous editor's contribution" (emphasis added). Adding "The previous sentence is false" certainly "negates a previous editor's contribution". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:37, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
I would quibble, WhatamIdoing, and say that prev-sent-is-false merely "qualifies" the other editor's contribution. That's just a quibble, though... my actual stance is that the phrase is incomplete. I would support your phrase, if it said "removes or negates any portion of the meaning of a previous editor's contribution". In practice, what happens is that one editor adds a sentence "$foo $bar $baz $quux[1][2][3]" and then a second editor deletes $foo $bar, then a short while later one of their factional allies deletes $baz $qux. I understand that removes-or-negates-any-portion is a very strong standard... but like the rule about must-be-cited-if-challenged, there is plenty of room for collaborative behavior.
  *If* somebody adds uncited material, it can stay, no harm no foul, as long as nobody challenges the stuff. *If* somebody collaboratively removes-or-negates-any-portion, and the other collaborator sees it as collaboration, and there is plenty of non-acrimonious back-n-forth in mainspace, attempting to find consensus via collaborative editing, then great. Nobody edit-warred, because nobody got upset. However, as soon as one party to the collaboration says "take this to the talkpage" or something like "quit reverting me" ... or by definition, as soon as one person clicks the actual undo-button... then discussion is mandatory, and continuing to pretend to "collaborate" by removing-or-negating-any-portion, is quite simply edit-warring. Does this make sense? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:51, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
Your "nobody got upset" standard makes sense to me, but it apparently didn't make sense to the admin whose behavior prompted this discussion. He decided that these editors were all edit-warring, even though they thought they were collaborating towards a consensus that satisfied everyone.
As a result, the goal isn't to write a policy that would guide the behavior of someone who already understands this. We're trying to rein in someone who actually said that "any change, no matter how small to the text of an article, is a revert" and potentially actionable as edit warring here. He literally claimed that if you start an article, and I fix an obvious typo, or add a sentence, or clean up a citation formatting error, then I've "reverted" you, no matter what you think about my contribution—in fact, even if you personally asked me to make that edit. We need to make it impossible for admins to put forward this hopelessly wrong position in the future, without tying their hands when there really are problems to be addressed.
We can't and shouldn't require discussion upon the use of WP:UNDO. Why should you start a discussion about reverting/undoing vandalism? What if you use UNDO to clean up a mess that someone accidentally created, but also add in the content that they meant to add? You have to use judgment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:18, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, the nobody-got-upset standard *is* what Bbb23 was following, to my mind. I'm definitely not trying to rein in somebody... because if my sentence says "Hello world" and you come along and change it to read "Howdy Earth" then you did potentially just make me unhappy. And if you keep making changes, and on the talkpage I'm hollering for you to stop, and in the edit-summaries, I'm hollering for you to stop, and we're both redoing/undoing the changes, then we are engaging in edit-warring. Since I was there, I can *assure* you that edit-warring is what was happening at the Rupert Sheldrake page, when Bbb23 showed up, and still is. A long running edit war — since April 2013 or thereabouts — which is still ongoing. Your statement here is just flat wrong: "...they thought they were collaborating towards a consensus that satisfied everyone."
  As for whether the rest of your logic is correct, about needing to rein in hopelessly wrong admins, I guess that depends on whether or not you can be made to see the unhappiness-level.  :-)   Nobody was/is happy on that basket-case-article. p.s. Yes, vandalism is an exception to WP:BRD... and also to WP:EW which we are discussing!  :-)   And no, I didn't mean to include vandalize/undo/vandalizeAgain/undoAgain/etc sequences when I said "as soon as one good-faith person clicks the actual undo-button then discussion is morally mandatory per WP:BRD". WP:BRD is just an essay of course, but WP:EW is policy: "Don't use edits to fight with other editors – disagreements should be resolved through discussion." I'm firmly against adding any (new) loopholes, besides the existing loopholes for BLPTALK and blatant-vandalism and WP:IAR behavior. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 11:41, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
If he actually followed the nobody-got-upset standard, then why did all of people he accused of edit warring (on both sides) immediately object that none of them were upset with the specific changes the other people had made and that they were satisfied with the result? Is it possible that his mind-reading skills are insufficient to determine whether other people are upset, especially when none of them are complaining? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:31, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Recent work

While we're at it, let's fix the bigger gaping hole and say that it undoes another editor's recent work. North8000 (talk) 12:37, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Recent meaning, 18 months, before a change is considered stable as opposed to recent? That would seem pretty conservative. 6 months would be a little more dicey; I've personally seen somebody in the Irish Republican Army articles that has been coming back like clockwork roughly once per year, since 2006 or 2007 (probably on some specific annual holiday? I'm not sure which it would be though). Anything under 3 months would seem dramatically too short for my tastes. Maybe the duration should be measured in pageviews to the article in question (aka eyeball-reviewing-counts), rather than in months (aka lunar-phase-counts). What is the slowest actionable edit-war, that folks here have observed? Perhaps as participants....  :-)   74.192.84.101 (talk) 12:50, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
[[North, I think this is a great idea. Edit warring happens over the space of days or maybe weeks. It does not involve one edit by each party each year. What exactly constitutes "recent" will depend on the article and the scale of the changes. If the article sees only one edit a day, then reverting a single sentence once a week (times several weeks) would probably count. If it sees 100 edits per day, then that same reversion would probably not count. But reverting the whole article once a week probably would count. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:41, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Multi-party edit wars

Another thing missing is the explicit discussion of multi-party edit wars. I've seen far too many folks get in trouble jumping in with 1 or 2 reverts in an ongoing edit war between multiple parties and then not understand that they were. in fact, a partisan to participating in the war, and even reject multiple admins informing them that they were. Toddst1 (talk) 20:34, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Toddst1 raises an excellent point. This needs to be clarified. Dougweller (talk) 13:52, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
If the goal is to herd the chaos into discussion supported by WP:DR as necessary, then there is nothing to be gained by embarrassing the well-intended editor you just described with the label "partisan" or "edit warrior". Focus on the goal of what could work, instead of pissing folks off with labels about what is not working. So instead of describing these as "multiple party edit wars" let's instead call them an WP:IDEP for insufficiently-discussed edit parties or WP:CB4C for chaos before consensus. That should be grounds for article protection and sending everyone to the talk page. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 15:22, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
The existing WP:AVOIDEDITWAR policy clearly notes that experienced editors " limiting themselves to a single revert; ..."(emphasis mine). A single revert is not edit warring. It's a statement of intent / opinion, it's WP:BOLD (pillar, you know) it's part of the normal editing process wiki process. It's wikipedia's version of Apoptosis; without it articles would grow it useless piles of fancruft. NE Ent 23:27, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
That's the point: If there is an edit war underway and you jump in and repeat one of the reverts, you are edit warring by definition - repeating an override of another's contribution. It needs to be called out as such.
The point about WP:BOLD is it's meant to be done once - as in WP:BRD. If that bold edit has been made and reverted, repeating that edit (boldly nor not), is not at all constructive and not in the spirit of achieving consensus. That's why it's considered edit warring.
The goal is not to label folks as participants, rather, to more clearly explain this frequently misunderstood policy to help folks avoid accidentally getting caught up in it. Toddst1 (talk) 19:05, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
The problem is that the simple solution to a multi-party edit war, protection, is often undesirable in the circumstances where multi-party edit wars are common; articles related to breaking news. On other articles, you very quickly run out of new editors arriving and making single reverts. And we should be very reluctant to protect a quickly developing article just because there is an edit war over one small part of it. In that circumstance, it really does make sense to try to intervene, and get each new editor to stop after the first edit, by reminding them they are edit warring, rather then wait till they make a 2nd or 3rd revert. Monty845 19:52, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Reasonable minds can in good faith differ here. Before we decide to let good faith editors be called an "edit warrior" for a single revert, I think this change should be vetted by a much wider community than watchers of this talk page. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:03, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

To clarify, it may be semantics, but I would warn them that they have involved themselves in an edit war, as opposed to calling them edit warriors, which to me denotes someone with a history of getting into edit wars, not a one off thing. I would even go so far as to say violating the 3rr rule one time doesn't make you an edit warrior, just someone who was in at least one edit war. Monty845 20:09, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
Without using any wikipedia jargon, what exactly is the problem we are talking about here? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:31, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
Yes please. How is edit warring being defined here? If one editor makes an obvious pov or otherwise 'bad' edit, and is reverted by several editors, are they really edit warring? That means that one person without consensus can turn other editors into 'edit warriors' just be continuing their edits. Dougweller (talk) 21:24, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
It's like trying to fix one card in a shaky card house. Starting with the definition of a revert.....technically any modification of existing material is a "revert". (e.g. if you take out something that someone put in 8 years ago, that is a "revert". Next is what constitutes warring vs. just as acting on behalf of, as a part of or in support of a consensus. And are multiple reverts against someone who is substituting "BRBBB" for "BRD" warring? I think that tweaks in several related areas are needed to deal with this. North8000 (talk) 21:36, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
I disagree that "any modification of existing material is a 'revert'." Going by that definition means that any extensive changes we make to an article, such as extensive copyediting, are a bunch of reverts. Flyer22 (talk) 19:58, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Proposal: in the How experienced editors avoid becoming involved in edit wars section, add:

Because an edit war occurs when editors repeatedly override each other's contributions, in situations where two (or more) editors have already repeatedly overridden each other's contributions, joining in by repeating one of those edits is usually not the best course of action.

The definition cited is directly from the first sentence of the policy. I'm sure this doesn't solve all the problems, but I believe it's a good first step. Toddst1 (talk) 21:54, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

The first line of the policy says "repeatedly." One revert is not repeatedly. NE Ent 23:08, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
The point is not about the individual, but the collective. If it's repeated (by individuals or a group) it's a problem. If there's an edit war going on, jumping in on either side is not at all constructive. Toddst1 (talk) 23:17, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
Sounds like vandal fighters might be labeled "edit warriors". Multiple reverts in a contentious issue, yes. One revert in a storm of reverts, no. There are other alternatives than labels and blocks. An administrator that chooses multiple blocks/warnings over a single page protection operation needs to rethink their purpose. --DHeyward (talk) 07:42, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Comment While I think jumping into an edit war and restoring someone else's edit or reverting can sometimes be like throwing petrol on the fire, we're not going to block people for just a single revert are we? In particularly contentious areas the 1RR rule can be invoked, or worst case scenario an article can be protected if a dispute gets out of hand. If there is clear tag-teaming going on an admin has the prerogative to treat the edits collectively. Personally, I think a third opinion is much more productive if it remains a third opinion, but if someone ultimately decides to express themselves through a single edit rather than adding their comments to a discussion I suppose we have to just accept that. Editors don't need permission to edit at the end of the day. Betty Logan (talk) 23:44, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

@The Proposal above, Opposed because being addressed to "experienced editors" the waffly text doesn't address an obvious defect on the part of those experienced editors judgment, and/or, the waffly text does not provide a strong solution. Instead of telling experienced eds what is "usually not the best course of action" maybe we should provide a list of the responses that are the best course of action. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 01:44, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

  • Also very uneasy with the proposal; I really don't think we want to go there. We already have enough arbcom decisions which say that if one person is not allowed to add infoboxen, but they would have wanted to add an infoboxen to article X, and some uninvolved editor does dare to add an infoboxen to X, then that *is* editing naughtily by proxy and discretionary sanctions most foul shalt immediately be applied. Yuck. Yes, there are situations where editors canvas, trying to call their wikiBuddies to the page to help fight for the cause. Yes, there are situations where editors use off-wiki communication channels, to conceal their canvassing. And yes, there are editors who act as tag-team WP:NINJAs so as to WP:OWN some article. And of course, sockmasters can easily have each of their puppets perform up to three reverts per article per day, and technically not be edit-warring (though of course they *are* socking).
  Therefore, we should make one stinkin' revert count as edit-warring? Nope.  :-)   Sounds like the wrong fix. I'd be happier with a very strong statement that *two* reverts by one editor... when more than one other editor is already WP:INVOLVED... is extremely likely to be seen as participating in an edit-war. Then, we can have see-also-stuff, pointing to wp:own and wp:canvass and the other related policies. But the big one is WP:NOTFACTIONS aka WP:NOTBATTLEGROUND.
  One revert per editor, though, to me sounds more like protecting the encyclopedia, than it sounds like an "edit-war" of any sort. A well regulated WP:RCP, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the WP:WikiFauna to keep and bear WP:UNDO, shall not be infringed. I just know that sentence is in the wikiConstitution somewhere, eh? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 12:40, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
I don't think a single revert should ever be considered edit warring. To do so would hold editors responsible for the behaviour of others. If I see an edit that I don't think is an improvement and revert it, but fail to carefully check the entire history of the article over the past two weeks, suddenly I'm edit warring? If adhering to a 1RR isn't enough to keep my block log clear, I'd just stop watching articles altogether.
I think most reverts are good reverts, so we don't want to be too punitive of the editors who make them. There is a role for multiple editors restoring a consensus version of a page against a single editor determined to make a bad edit. Perhaps this isn't ideal, but it's a necessary mechanic, as this happens all the time and it would be impractical to escalate every instance of it. It usually resolves itself.
I would support the above proposal if it clarified that jumping into an ongoing edit war with a single edit, while generally not a great idea, is not edit warring.--Trystan (talk) 14:49, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Trystan's concerns. This would have the effect of punishing people who are innocently patrolling RecentChanges to the best of their abilities, rather than being focused on the regular participants at the article, who presumably know what's happening. (And even then, what if you're the first person to revert something? Should you be punished for 'edit warring' because of other people's subsequent actions?)
On the other hand, "one revert is always free" may sound to a few editors like "please engage in socking and logrolling", so we might need to think about how to say that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:04, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
I also agree with Trystan (except that I don't support Toddst1's proposals at all); I completely disagree with Toddst1 that "If there is an edit war underway and you jump in and repeat one of the reverts, you are edit warring by definition - repeating an override of another's contribution. It needs to be called out as such." Like Dougweller stated, "If one editor makes an obvious pov or otherwise 'bad' edit, and is reverted by several editors, are they really edit warring? That means that one person without consensus can turn other editors into 'edit warriors' just b[y] continuing their edits." So I also agree with Dougweller; some edits need to be reverted, and those who are violating WP:Consensus need to be stopped; if it takes two or more editors reverting that editor, which eventually gets that sole editor blocked for a WP:3RR violation, then so be it. That's the way it should be if that edit needs to be reverted and the editor is violating the WP:Consensus policy. That's the way it already is, with one of the reverts sometimes being by a WP:Administrator who has intervened before semi-protecting or full-protecting the article (whether one wants to call that WP:INVOLVED or not). The WP:Edit warring policy is fine as it is. Flyer22 (talk) 19:29, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
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