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(Modified from an original essay by Alexia Death)
Preface
One of the issues that wastes a lot of productive time (and usually generates more heat than light) is when one group agrees with each other too well . They must surely be sock- and meatpuppets and need to be banned or punished since they must coordinate their edits somehow behind the scenes!! Well, the accusation itself... It just sounds wrong. Being accused of collaboration in the context of a project that is based on people working together? There must be a logical fault somewhere. Is it not absurd? Why does this happen?
Why is POV pushing successful and why is canvassing a problem? It is all because because of 3RR. Who ever designed it had nice ideals and, in theory and if we disregard human nature, 3RR works.
Not so in real life. The goal of this essay is to clearly show why not and how, we could fix it and make editing Misplaced Pages more pleasant for all of us and more quickly build a better encyclopaedia with less redundant effort and unnecessary stress.
What is wrong with 3RR
At the core of the issue is the way WP:3RR ignores the content under dispute.
The current 3RR rule is designed to facilitate quick administrative decisions (and subsequnet enforcement) without requiring evaluation of content. However, in its current form, these decisions do not empower discussion over steamrollering - and that has many adverse affects, ultimately hurting community and creating unnecessary blocks in communication and development.
It's about numbers not about content
3RR makes numbers matter, not the content and its validity. That's its number one fault. Ideally, the current rules should mean that consensus wins.
The winners, the losers, and the victimized content
If an edit prevails through an edit war of this nature then accusations, witch hunts and conflicts are imminent. You can say it is not about winning or losing, but if you get steamrollered in an edit war, it matters naught, for the one just ran over will feel like he just lost.
It is human nature. And the content loses something, that was perhaps unsuitable in the form reverted but, when talked about and refactored might be worth inclusion. If the content is really unsuitable and unsourced, but the inserter believes it hard enough and has active comrades to edit war over it then nothing is solved and a large scale edit war ensues. Who prevails is the side that runs out of "3 lives" first and that may not be a random thing where teams have prepared clean skin puppets in advance. And again, content suffers. These prolonged edit wars solve nothing and hurt more than is apparent to the eye. They hurt the will to collaborate, just as "good coin drives out bad".
Are all low activity users and newbies not in the dark about conventions of Misplaced Pages Socks?
Accusations of being sock- and meatpuppets against active newbies or low activity editors are common in content disputes. If a newbie dares to agree with any side of a heated dispute someone is bound to accuse that newbie or low activity user of being a sock. This negates all rules about not biting newbies and leaves a rather unpleasant feeling in your heart. It is very degrading, if you are discarded as not being an individual. Making an effort to understand the system before participating is also a fault. This is insane! I personally went through this ordeal with disbelief and became very close to being permanently blocked due to these accusations even though they were groundless and the accusers and blocking admin knew it. WP:RFCU is not magic and makes mistakes.
But there are those who cheat. And the only way to stop that cheating is to remove the perverse motivation for socks to exist - at least at the level of content disputes. Currently that motivation is 3RR.
[I cannot imagine how many potentially good contributors are lost to our project because of ambiguity in interpretation of checkuser results.
This leaves aside the questionable natural justice in a "judicial procedure" that only permits two common verdicts: "puppet" or "probably a puppet - wait a bit and try again".
If one requests an exculpatory check or verdict for oneself, one is told to "stop fishing".
Even with the Hitler era courts it was technically possible to be acquitted!]
Finding assistance and support is BAD
Why is actually developing Misplaced Pages so stressful? It's because asking for help in a dispute is frowned on! Getting more people who agree with you involved in disputes is called canvassing. Why? Because of 3RR! In terms of 3RR, asking for help would give you an unfair advantage. These people could benefit the content, they could bring sources, they could bring a fresh view, but no, asking them is BAD. Editors' stress levels rise, they get upset and lose focus on the goal. They fail to assume good faith and bicker. As a result the content suffers. And when the content suffers, our project suffers.
Vision for future: A better 3RR
The faulty system can be fixed. The rules CAN be made the good for the content and not for edit warriors. All it would take is a little change to the 3RR. I call it "3RR+1".
- Reverts are counted per edit not per editor.
- If an edit/material removal/material addition has been reverted three times and restored again then further reverts are not allowed without consensus in talk.
- as an exception to previous rule a previously uninvolved editor can revert just once again with a condition, that dispute resolution is started in talk on the matter.
- Disputed content must be tagged appropriately. If content stays removed, then it is replaced with a comment marker, if it is visible, with an appropriate disputed tag.
Misplaced Pages needs this change. Come, discuss in talk of this page. Lets see what can be done to make Misplaced Pages a better encyclopedia and a friendlier environment for editors!
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