Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archive
Archives
/Archive 1


Contents

[edit] Malformed Reports

I'm becoming very tired of having to close reports unconsidered because the reporting party hasn't followed the instructions but actioning incomplete reports encourages users to leave the research on a violation to the considering admin. So everyone is very clear on this, I'm going to close every report that I see that has not properly followed the instructions. I won't be officious about this but the bare minimum I will accept is that the report idemises the alleged violation with diffs to every revert. Links to warnings are also vital unless the person reported is an experienced editor Spartaz Humbug! 15:32, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

agreed there are way too many people who just don't follow the instructions as listed on the bottom. Maybe we can move the template to the top of the page. thoughts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nat (talk • contribs) 15:39, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, move the example form to the top; it's not easy to find if you don't know where it is. And move the TOC up instead have pages of stuff above it. Dicklyon 06:38, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
As someone who first used 3RR a few days ago [1] after being on WP for 2 years, I found the process so unfriendly that I'm unlikely to spend the effort doing so again. For instance, trying to understand "Previous version reverted to:" You're making good editors jump through hoops whilst bad editors can revert in a split second. -- John (Daytona2 · Talk · Contribs) 19:03, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 3RR on anonymous IPs

An editor using various anonymous IPs has been determined in inserting unallowed blog links in Gucci Gang controversy (as seen here). Since the anonymous IP has been used up to twice at most, should I have to wait for it to revert with the same IP before filing a 3RR complaint? Starczamora (talk) 16:03, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

If it's the same person doing the reverts, it's how many reverts that person is doing; it doesn't matter if they use different IP's to do them. It might be appropriate to fill out a sockpuppet report at Wikipedia:Suspected sockpuppets although if the IP address is only changing because the person is using dynamic IP then maybe that doesn't count as sockpuppet abuse. It still counts as 3RR violation if it's the same person and they do more than 3 reverts total in 24 hours. See WP:3RR. --Coppertwig (talk) 16:44, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
The additions of the bad links are 6 days or more in the past, so 3RR is unlikely to accept such a report. Anyway, it's not much use to file this at 3RR if it's a different IP every time, since blocking all of the IPs would not be practical. Instead, consider posting a complaint about the web site www.iloiloviews.com at WT:WPSPAM. Editors at that noticeboard can advise you if the site qualifies for adding to the spam blacklist. Longer semi-protection of Gucci Gang controversy is another option to consider. (Will Beback protected it for a week, but it will run out soon). EdJohnston (talk) 16:37, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion of policy change

A policy change is being proposed at the Village Pump, whereby a 3RR block would only be possible if preceded by a warning and if the offender persists. This seems only reasonable, since a similar courtesy is extended to vandals under WP:Vandalism, and over-zealous edit-warriors can hardly be thought to merit harsher treatment than vandals. (Can they?)

The relevant thread is at WP:VPP#Question about 3RR policy - the proposal in question appears towards the end of that section.--Kotniski (talk) 12:58, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal: 3RR board → Edit warring board

I have a proposal that I'd like to put out there. We've recently moved away from the technical restrictions of the three-revert rule, and began focussing on revert warring. To clarify, my interpretation of edit warring is:

Revert (or edit) warring is repeatedly reverting the changes of other editors, simply because you do not agree with their change, and continually using reverts to "force through" what you think is the proper version of an article.

Perhaps its time we moved Administrators' Noticeboard/3RR away from the three-revert rule, and towards the less-bureaucratic, more suitable ethos of edit warring? I'm very willing to work night-and-day to implement this change, but I'd like to know that it's going to be well received.

Additionally, I'm hoping that the new "edit warring noticeboard" will place a focus on rehabilitation of edit warring editors. I feel there's insufficient focus on pushing parties of a dispute through to dispute resolution, and away from revert warring. Once again, I'm willing to implement this in my new version; I would like assurances, however, that it will be well-received. Anthøny 16:38, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Man, am I out of it today. "my new version" - um, what exactly do you mean by that? John Carter (talk) 16:50, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Hello Anthony. You seem to be very experienced as a Wikipedia administrator, and you have even clerked for Arbcom. But I haven't seen your name yet as a closer of any 3RR cases. I urge you to try out a few before you decide that the current system is not working. Some advantages of 3RR:
  • You get a deterministic outcome
  • Every submission gets looked at and thought about (cf. ANI, which archives many items with no action, and perhaps with no careful review)
  • No endless discussion threads
  • The verdicts often reflect judgment and common sense (if you don't think so, examine a few submissions as they come in and try to predict the outcome)
3RR is much less bureaucratic than it appears. If you consider the current system to be lacking, I would welcome some examples. EdJohnston (talk) 17:07, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
The recent UEFA Cup edit wars over several related articles. Given an 8hr ban from a 1st filing, immediately resumed, then when filed again, ignored here by the very same admin as a mis-filing, and technical non-breaches. Eventually resolved by rc patrollers who noticed the capital letter edit summaries. MickMacNee (talk) 17:25, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Just so everyone knows, Anthony is indeed experienced in closing 3RR reports. I remember when he first showed up here, even.
As for what to do here: I already treat this board as an edit warring board when I'm here (which admittedly has been infrequently for a bit now). One of many ways, and indeed the most common way, to measure edit warring is three-revert rule, and probably 90% of the time it works well. The other 10% comes into play when people revert war without breaking 3RR, and admins should be careful about this. Mechanically enforcing 3RR is not in the community's best interest. One example of enforcing 3RR mechanically that's not good: one editor reverts four times in 24 hours, another reverts three. Blocking only the one who reverts four sends the message that you should be careful to stay just under the limit to win a content dispute rather than pursuing dispute resolution. In whatever way we use this noticeboard, we need to remember these limitations of mechanically enforcing 3RR.
Now to the question, should we make changes? Renaming this board to an edit warring board could have some clear advantages. It emphasizes the actual misbehaviour rather than the yardstick used to measure that behaviour. It also emphasizes that people can report non-3RR-violating cases of edit warring. Then again, making the scope more vague could lead to problems with gratuitous reports, like those we got at PAIN in the old days. As for our methods here, I think regardless of what we call the board, it's important that we be willing to look at reports of edit warring that doesn't include 3RR vios.
Although this wasn't part of the original discussion, one thing I think we could do better is using protection less often. I think we are too quick to shy away from blocks in favour of protection, even if it's just two users edit warring or one user edit warring against several. Why should other editors be locked out when the fault lies with the edit warring users? If an edit war is truly spread out among several on each side, sure, protection makes sense. But otherwise, blocks can generally solve the problem.
OK, those are my long-winded thoughts. Thanks for reading. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 22:35, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Just a reply to Ed Johnston, I have indeed been around this noticeboard in the past; nowadays, I tend to act as a bit of a "lone ranger", dealing with edit warring as I see it, rather than in response to reports filed here. I would also like to respond to Ed's other above points:
  • Every report looked at: and an "edit warring" noticeboard would be the same. We needn't simply make the noticeboard like a specialist version of AN and AN/I; the requirement for a list of diffs pointing to edit warring, the structure, the links to affected articles - the entire "report" feel could remain. We simply needn't tie ourselves down to a party having to have made 4 reverts in 24 hours, or (excluding the occasional report which feels IAR's force) there's no block.
  • No endless discussion: again, I think I may have been misunderstood here; I am not necessarily suggesting AN3 become a specialist version of AN(/I). We needn't deviate from the report structure if it's not felt appropriate. Discussion is currently either 1/ ignored, or 2/ moved to the talk page; the same can stay, if the reports become focussed on the edit warring, rather than 3RR.
  • Verdicts reflect judgement/common sense: and they will continue to do so :) In fact, I like Heimstern's quote: "It emphasizes the actual misbehaviour rather than the yardstick used to measure that behaviour". Common sense will prevail more in an edit warring noticeboard, than in the current system, whereby, very often, blocks are declined for blatant edit warring, simply because the disruption was limited to 2-3 reverts in 24 hours.
In all, this new system will work better. Current reforms are going on at requests for checkuser and suspected sock puppetry (see here). We're capable of doing the same thing: moving with the times, continually updating our processes to reflect current practice, and what's best for the project. I'll be opening a discussion of the same sorts as Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/SSP-RFCU merger proposal, and perhaps a sandbox process to look at basic structure. We're a little way away from a full change-over yet, and I'm not going to move to implement the new decision so hastily: we've not had that many opinions yet. I also don't want to give the impression that I'm steamrolling over discussion, and jumping the gun here. But, ultimately, I think a change is in order. Anthøny 16:18, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Any advances on this? Anthøny 18:49, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussing or defending yourself on a 3RR accusation?

Where does a discussion or defense of a 3RR accusation take place?

Wageslave (talk) 02:37, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

People often post comments immediately below a 3RR report about themself on this noticeboard. Discussion should stay on-topic, i.e. about whether 3RR has been violated or not, and not veer into discussion of article content or other issues except as really necessary to discussing the 3RR issue. If the accusation has taken place somewhere else, then I suppose it can be discussed there. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 16:47, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "New section" button

Why doesn't the report page have a new section button? It's rather annoying copying and pasting into a previous section on something so big (as in, it's a lot to type). My first guess would be because the example is at the bottom, but can't that (shouldn't it) be placed at the top anyway. Grsztalk 16:06, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Good point. Another feature of this board that might be fixed some day is that section links don't work. Whenever the outcome is entered (24 hours, no vio or whatever), it changes the section header. You can't enter a link to an open 3RR case on any other page and expect it to work in the future. With boards like WP:COIN that use the {{resolved}} template, entering the outcome doesn't change the section pointers. This also effects the section pointers that appear in edit history. EdJohnston (talk) 17:15, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
Resolved. blocked 24 hours
I never understood why that wasn't used here either. Grsztalk 17:20, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps one advantage of the current system is that one can just look at the table of contents to see what still needs to be looked at, rather than having to scroll through the whole page. If that's a big advantage, then (a) why isn't the table of contents closer to the top of the page, and (b) why don't the other pages use a system like the one here? Perhaps the TOC usage is more important on this noticeboard because pretty well any admin can handle and resolve any case, whereas on the some of the other noticeboards more discussion may be required. I just thought of a way to get the best of both worlds: a section link can be added as <span id="Username"/>. But that would add one more complication to a report that people already have trouble filling out, so maybe not. The {{AN3}} template is similar to the resolved template, but the result is still also normally filled in in the section header; should that custom be changed? ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 18:50, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Section headings

I see there are two "Violations" section headings. I assume the second one should be deleted? Also, perhaps it would make sense for the "Example" and "See Also" section to each have only one equals sign, like the "Violations" secton, to make them more prominent. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 12:16, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How best to deal with seemingly earnest but seemingly mistaken roving IP address (anon) user?

On Anussati (which deals with a type of Buddhist mediation called "recollections"), a anon user using different IP addresses all based at Queens [NY] College (recently using 149.4.218.43 and 149.4.42.149 and previously, regarding a related matter, using 149.4.105.16 and once New22) has repeatedly inserted the same material even though reverted once (perhaps hastily?) by another user and twice by myself and despite my attempting to engage the user (fruitlessly) on the talk page (Talk:Anussati#Four recollections). His edits have escalated from adding poorly formatted, uncited and dubious material to re-adding the dubious material and deleting citated material. Any suggestions? Thanks for any help, Larry Rosenfeld (talk) 18:15, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I have a similar problem on the Literary Arabic page where a single unregistered user is continually changing valid linguistic material to highly-POV. I continue to revert him and ask him to take it to the Talk page, but he continues to add the same, word-for-word information each time. Where do we report this? (Taivo (talk) 23:41, 21 May 2008 (UTC))

[edit] BLP exception

There has been substantial discussion of the BLP exception to the 3RR at WT:BLP/3RR, in particular whether it is actually applied (consistently) in practice, whether it is ever abused, whether it solves BLP issues better than the alternatives, and whether it provides any benefit to the newcomer trying to clean up his own Wikipedia article. We tried to gather some case studies, but the evidence seems thin in all directions, and the discussion became side-tracked in some meta-issues. agr made the helpful suggestion that we seek input from the people with most experience in dealing with 3RR reports. My apologies for not bringing it here sooner. Bovlb (talk) 03:47, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ambiguity in the header?

The header says this page is for reporting breaches of 3RR, but not for reporting anything other than edit warring. So what if someone wants to report edit warring which does not involve a breach of 3RR? Is this page a suitable place to do so? Either way I think it should be made clear in the header.--Kotniski (talk) 11:33, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I personally would take seriously at a complaint about non-3RR edit-warring which was extremely well-documented. Experience would show whether we are able to deal with such reports. People do sometimes submit edit-warring complaints here, but usually they don't have enough backup. If it is merely offered to the closing admin as a research project, it's not worth our effect to untangle it. EdJohnston (talk) 18:57, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 3RRN admin guide

I have written an admin guide here to assist myself and fellow admins in dealing with reports. Could other user's please tell me if it reads okay and if it's fair and just? Additionally, should it be moved into the mainspace? And where, if anywhere, should it be linked on the noticeboard? Thanks in advance, guys. ScarianCall me Pat! 16:32, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

If we follow the example of Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism/Administrator instructions, your new file might go at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR/Administrator instructions. Then we could have a link to it at the upper right corner of the noticeboard (small and inconspicuous, so that nobody complains about instruction creep :-). EdJohnston (talk) 02:12, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Let's do it! Enigma message 00:43, 11 June 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Need Help

I'm dealing with four editors who are engaging in admitted violation of NPOV by removing a factual description of a book. 132.241.178.146 (talk) 17:51, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I sought neutral opinion on this matter in May. [2] User nneonneo was kind enough to offer this reply. [3]. Other editors reached the same conclusion. ~ smb 21:27, 13 June 2008 (UTC)