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Revision as of 22:28, 1 January 2008

Arbitrators active on this case

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Article probation

Can this please be extended to, at the very least, Race of ancient Egyptians? Both these articles would be better than one, in my opinion. Picaroon (t) 22:09, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Aye. Moreschi 22:12, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Rollback

Rollback is now to be made available to non-admins, is already available to non-admins through Twinkle, and can also be accessed via the inbuilt Undo function. I don't think use of rollback is such a big deal these days. Guy (Help!) 10:06, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Comment: rollback and undo are both violations of WP:REVERT, part of which I'll paste below. To sum-up, reverts are appropriate for vandalism or removing your own edits, which is not how dbachmann has been using it. It's a form of edit-warring that has long gone unchecked here. It NEVER leads to productive editing. Before the "undo" feature came about, revert was almost exclusively abused by administrators as no one else could do this, except with add-ons like popups or Twinkie. Since this issue has been raised in a documented manner, a ruling on this behavior is appropriate. I'm not saying dbachmann should be banned or blocked for this; he was probably just following the lead of other more experienced users, but a ruling would make sense here that could apply to future cases.

Justforasecond (talk) 20:13, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Do

• Reverting is a decision which should be taken seriously.
• Reverting is used primarily for fighting vandalism, or anything very similar to the effects of vandalism.
• If you are not sure whether a revert is appropriate, discuss it first rather than immediately reverting or deleting it.
• If you feel the edit is unsatisfactory, improve it rather than simply reverting or deleting it.

Do not

• Do not simply revert changes that are made as part of a dispute. Be respectful to other editors, their contributions and their points of view.
• Do not revert good faith edits. In other words, try to consider the editor "on the other end." If what one is attempting is a positive contribution to Misplaced Pages, a revert of those contributions is inappropriate unless, and only unless, you as an editor possess firm, substantive, and objective proof to the contrary. Mere disagreement is not such proof. See also Misplaced Pages:Assume good faith.
• Generally there are misconceptions that problematic sections of an article or recent changes are the reasons for reverting or deletion. If they contain valid information, these texts should simply be edited and improved accordingly. Reverting is not a decision which should be taken lightly.
• There's sometimes trouble determining whether some claim is true or useful, particularly when there are few people "on board" who are knowledgeable about the topic. In such a case, it's a good idea to raise objections on a talk page; if one has some reason to believe that the author of what appears to be biased material will not be induced to change it, editors have sometimes taken the step of transferring the text in question to the talk page itself, thus not deleting it entirely. This action should be taken more or less as a last resort, never as a way of punishing people who have written something biased. See also Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view/FAQ
• Do not revert changes simply because someone makes an edit you consider problematic, biased, or inaccurate. Improve the edit, rather than reverting it.

To Uninvited

You might as well deal with the issues concerning Bakasuprman and Deeceevoice now. If you don't I will simply request brand new cases the minute this one closes, copy-pasting the evidence submitted here and doubling the Arbcom's case load :) Both these users commented very vociferously at the RFC and have long histories with Dbachmann. They were a major part of the build-up to this case. Given that, it's not unreasonable to make them parties to the case and examine their conduct as well. Thinking practically the problems concerning these users should be dealt with now, because if they are not I will not let the matter die. Moreschi 22:06, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Moreschi that another case should not be required, but it will be filed if necessary. I had considered filing a case regarding the edit-warring and incivility on race-related articles, but held off; had I filed it, it would not have been about any specific user, but instead about the generally unacceptable situation. Is the only reason you don't want to consider these directly involved users now (as opposed to in a few weeks, when another case has been accepted, as it surely will) the fact that Futurebird filed a case first, and made it exclusively about Dbachmann? Dbachmann's behavior is clearly not the extent of the dispute; why not address the whole issue here? Kirill voted to accept saying "Accept to examine the behavior of all parties", after all.Picaroon (t) 22:28, 1 January 2008 (UTC)