Wikipedia:Wheel war/Commentary

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This is a page of comments and references for Wikipedia:Wheel war.

[edit] Merge

This page resulted from a merger of existing Guidelines with similar names:

The former served as the basis for 0WW policy; the latter for 0WW guidelines.

[edit] Commentary

Following are a number of (refactored) comments made in relation to wheel-warring policy. While none have effect equal to the policy itself, all may serve as a guide to interpretation.

  • As a rule, administrators should not undo each other's admin actions. If you disagree with an admin's action, discuss the issue with him/her.
  • If your action is reverted, you may not re-revert it: you must either discuss it or allow some other admin to take the action.
  • Discussion is warranted, not reversing action.
  • Any policy that makes exceptions will be open to interpretation, and thus fail to entirely prevent wheel warring.
  • Page protections are not generally supposed to be permanent but they do not automatically expire like blocks do.
  • Appeal to authority tends to polarize the discussion. The rogue admin has little incentive to participate in real discussion. All he/she has to do is be obstructionist enough to polarize the discussion and argue that consensus has never appeared. "I don't have to seek consensus because I can drag this out until Jimbo gets involved."
  • Benefit of doubt should lean towards curtailing admin powers.
    • No, Assume Good Faith should apply to admin decisions.
    • Assume Good Faith applies to the admin who decided to revert the action, too.
  • Please, no automatic deadminning. This should be like user blocking: preventive of disruption rather than punitive of the user.
  • Edit warring over protected pages is very disruptive.
    • A stronger policy against edit warring on protected pages may be wise but this policy is focused on use of non-editing admin powers.
  • Whoever reverses an admin action is responsible for any problems that result.
  • Some wheel wars are conducted by admins who each believe they are Wikipedia's sole defender against some threat. An admin needs to remember that he does not stand alone against the forces of chaos; he can enlist the aid of another admin.
  • Putting in an exception for vandalism invites attempts to surf the loophole thus created.
  • This should be per-user, otherwise the admin who takes action first is protected from having their action undone by anyone.
  • Keep in mind that deadminning requires steward intervention and most stewards will require evidence that a consensus exists on the project; they cannot be expected to review underlying rules to determine if a violation of local policy exists.
  • I like to see standards of conduct sharp and explicit, penalties for violations adjustable to fit the crime. Violations should never be common enough to demand rubber-stamp justice.
  • Self-reverts to correct one's own mistakes are allowed.
  • We can tolerate all the divisive, biased admins on Topic X weighing in, each throwing his single stone, and stepping aside. Eventually they will all have exhausted their single shots and more neutral admins can come along and clean up.
  • If one side is obviously wrong, they will probably run out of admins to vote for them sooner than the other side.
  • NWW might suggest to admins that what they're doing may be wrong, even if they're allowed to do it once.
  • This has the problem of rewarding the aggressor, if only two admins are involved. Admin A blocks, admin B unblocks. Admin A can't reblock and if no one else gets involved, admin B got his or her own way by being the aggressor.
    • This objection is based on the "sole defender of the wiki" theory of adminship. We're a community, and I should think that most admins have made contacts within the administrative community who can be asked to review a situation and reimpose a reversed action.
    • The "only two admins" scenario seems like a red herring to me. It's not as if we didn't have WP:ANI, user talk pages, e-mail, and IRC. You can always find another admin.
  • Wheel warring is a very bad thing, and the culture around it needs to change.

More information may be found by examining the contents of the discussions that led to the establishment of this policy.

[edit] See Also

  • Versions of talk pages prior to merge:
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