User talk:Jemmy Button

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Talk to me baby! —Jemmy

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[edit] Edit warring

[Moved from my user page. —JB] Admins here seem prone to insist one "handle it on the talk page." They don't recognize the reality that what the editor has got to do is win edit wars against morons. I went to #wikipedia-en and asked how to win an edit war, and they said: don't edit war. (Eventually, though, someone did give me concrete advice: request page protection. Still, the initial reaction indicates the problem.) This attitude is totally detached from reality. If someone refuses to listen, or to listen to reason, or is incapable of reason, you've got to edit war. —Jemmy_tc

[I have edited this comment from the original to highlight what is relevant. —JB] Read your note on your user page. The admins are right, of course, that you shouldn't "edit war." If the other users are editing according to an agenda or are doing things against Wikipedia rules, you can try to get them to stop yourself by giving them warnings, but if it doesn't work out you may need administrator assistance to get the user blocked to enforce the rules. Naturally, inappropriate edits like that should be undone, but that doesn't mean that having an edit war is the right way to resolve the problem. On the other hand, if the other editors aren't breaking the rules and simply disagree with your vision for the article, then discussion is the right thing to do. Yes, that can lead to a stalemate but there are ways to break it, for instance, by going to request a third opinion, or other forms of dispute resolution. Edit warring in this kind of case just makes things worse because it makes everyone more upset. Mangojuice^talk 14:41, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

What I would like to point out is that "administrator assistance," such as through dispute resolution, through requesting page protection or a block for disruption, etc., are nothing but means of winning the edit war. They are not distinct from it. It is only the edit war that creates the need for administrator assistance; and it is only through obtaining the support of the administrators for a particular version of a page that an edit war can definitively be won. The problem I am highlighting is that such support is likely to be withheld with some admonition to discuss, regardless of whether this is possible. Look, for example, at the protection request for No True Scotsman. If the problem could have been sorted out on the talk page, there would have been no need for protection. And in fact the conflict is not resolved: there is nothing preventing the same user from adding the same content at this point.

From my perspective the problem is this: I have put far too much time into this minor article, about which I hardly care, and which nobody else is taking care of. Thus I am stuck watching this page, with no means to enforce WP policy, or for that matter basic standards of quality, but to revert—which according to the policy, I am not supposed to do! Only administrative action can resolve the issue definitively, and it is not forthcoming. —Jemmy_tc 00:44, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

It's a terminology difference then. What you call an "edit war" we typically call simply a dispute or conflict. When we say "edit war" what we normally mean is a dispute in which the editors only edit back and forth between their preferred versions instead of looking for a more constructive way to resolve things. As for No True Scotsman, clearly the system worked there - you requested protection and it was appropriately granted as there was really nothing else that could be done. But if admins err on the side of requesting more discussion in borderline cases (which that one was not), it's out of a desire to stay out of the conflict and not choose a side. Mangojuice^talk 14:58, 25 January 2008 (UTC)