Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 02:28, 15 August 2004

Revert wars considered harmful (the three revert guideline)

Another one of Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines:

Don't revert any article more than three times in the same day.

This guideline applies to each person, and use of multiple accounts is not a legitimate way to avoid this limit. If the edit really needs reverting that much, somebody else will probably do it – and that will serve the vital purpose of showing that the community at large is in agreement over which of two competing versions is correct. If you like, chat with other Wikipedians whom you respect, and ask them if they could take a look. If you and the person you've asked to help have both needed to revert three times, then it is probably time to ask for the page to be protected.

If you find yourself reverting a considerable quantity of edits by the same user, due to vandalism or edits by a banned user, it may be appropriate to block the user or IP address. See Misplaced Pages:Bans and blocks for policy and procedure. Only administrators may place and remove blocks.

"Reversion wars" between two competing individuals are against Misplaced Pages's spirit, and reflect badly on both participants. Instead of performing a straight revert, look for ways to compromise, or alternate ways of saying the same thing - while such edits take more time and thought than another unthinking revert, they are far more likely to result in a mutually satisfactory article. In the case of newcomers who are genuinely making poor edits, being reverted by two or more people demonstrates that the reversions are not a one man crusade, but something closer to a consensus.

High-frequency reversion wars make the version history less useful, make it hard for other people to contribute, and flood recent changes and watchlists. Low-frequency reversion wars do not cause the community as many problems, though they still cause some. Experience has shown that waiting an hour or more between reverts to vandalism makes continued vandalism less likely. In most cases the troublemaker will lose interest and leave.

This principle could be compared to the Ko rule in Go (one cannot repeat positions), or chess's rule that if a position is repeated three times then the game can end in a draw.

Many users recommend spacing out your reverts to one per day. Benefits are:

• The other person might see the light of reason.
• You might realize that the other person was right!
• Others can easily step in and try to help. See, for example, MeatBall:DefendEachOther

Enforcement

Currently this rule is enforced by:

• Educating users who may not be aware of good Misplaced Pages practice in the matter.
• Peer pressure and leadership by example.
• Where pages are protected due to revert wars, sysops may protect pages on the version disliked by those who have engaged in excessive reverts. This is believed by some to be a recent change to the protection policy. The sysop also has the option to protect the current version, thereby maintaining a sense of neutrality.
• In the case of edit wars on important pages, users are sometimes blocked.
• In extreme cases, investigation by the arbitration committee, which may lead to any number of responses.

For the purposes of enforcement, some have taken a violation to mean four reverts separated by less than 24 hours. Others take "day" to mean a UTC day. It could also be taken to mean a day in a timezone other than UTC (such as that of the person reverting), or even the period between one episode of sleeping and the next. As a guideline we're more interested in promoting good practice and respect for others. "Sleep on it" is always good advice, and counting the hours until your next "legal" revert is probably a sign that you've got the wrong end of the stick.