Wikipedia talk:Revert

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Note that this talk page was spamvertised, and subsequently, you've guessed it, reverted. Do warn me if the main article is ever subject to it, so it can go on WP:BJAODN... JRM 14:06, 2005 Jan 18 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Reversion Explanation

The vote that made a 3RR rule violation a blockable offense (Wikipedia:Three revert rule enforcement was conducted between 14 Nov and 25 Nov, 2004. At the time of the vote, the 3RR text linked to this article, as its definition of "revert". This article was therefore, in effect, an extension of the 3RR policy, and it defines "revert" for the purposes of 3RR. At the time of the vote, this article, in turn, was a redirect to Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version, which describes the process for rolling an article back to a prior state in its edit history, either through the "reversion" process available to normal editors, or through the "rollback" feature available to administrators. Since January 2005, other editors have removed this redirect and have started to edit this article, in effect, extending the definition of "revert", and therefore the application of the 3RR, without those extensions going through any form of consensus formation. This seems incorrect, and I have therefore reverted the article to its state as of the 3RR. --BM 01:31, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"How to revert" is distinctly different from the definition of a revert. A lot of the text you see on the current Revert page is from the How to page, and elsewhere. I understand your point, but let's work on refining this definition, rather than bury our heads. -- Netoholic @ 01:40, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

I've taken the discussion to Wikipedia Talk:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR. Basically, the issue is that at the time 3RR became an official policy by a large consensus vote, instances of the word "revert" in the text of the policy redirected to Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version. Changing that has a significant effect on how the policy is interpreted and applied, and should not be done without consensus similar to that required to adopt the policy in the first place. --BM 01:49, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

So, propose your changes and gather consensus here on this page. I think you'll find very little support for "locking us in" to the mindset from Nov 2004. Experience over these months has shown we probably need a clearer definition of a revert, so let's make one. Think of it this way.... vandalism was part of the text of the 3RR enforcement proposal. Does this mean we should not update Wikipedia:Vandalism either? -- Netoholic @ 01:54, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

Well, I have no problem if the 3RR policy has turned out to have too restrictive a definition of revert, and that it needs to be broadened. But that should go through the usual process for setting policy. 3RR commanded one of the largest consensus votes of any policy ever adopted by the Wikipedia community. During that vote, "revert" had a very clear meaning. Anybody following the wiki-links on the word "revert" arrived at an article describing how to rollback an article to a prior state in its history. From the text of the comments, it is clear that people understood themselves to be prohibiting that being done by the same person on the same article more than 3 times in a 24 hour period. They did not arrive at this article with its paragraph on "More General reverts" which defines the removal of one sentence as a revert. If people think that those are good reforms of the 3RR, they should give the community the opportunity to express its views, and not slip those changes in by changing a redirect. This is not theoretical; this article is starting to be cited as the proper amplification of what constitutes a revert under the 3RR policy. It isn't. As for Wikipedia:Vandalism, I havn't studied its history, what polices link to it, or the context of those links. However, supposing that it figures importantly in Wikipedia:Blocking policy I would say that the only edits to it without wide consensus should be copy-edits and clarifications, for example based on Arb Com rulings. Changes to the fundamental definition of vandalism should go through consensus. --BM 02:07, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I see no problem removing the "More General reverts" section for the time being, as you have. That section is a relatively new invention, and merits discussion. We certainly should leave the sections relating to "full" reverts, and also the policy on "Always explain your reverts", since those have wide acceptance and long histories. I've reverted your other changes, because this page is far less useful as an "essay" documenting the wide variety of opinions. Let's keep things simple and clear. -- Netoholic @ 03:54, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)
Well, look, you can't have it both ways. If this article is official policy, then we should be following a different process entirely before we do more than copy-edit it. That would apply to all edits made since January, starting with the one that changed it from being a redirect. If it isn't official policy, then it is just an article in the Wikipedia name space. WP:NPOV, etc, then apply, and the article should be precisely an encyclopedia article which gives an NPOV presentation of various points of view and approaches to the issue of reversion. So, which is it going to be? --BM 04:06, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed Rewrite of First Part

I rewrote the first section of the article up to the section, "Explain reverts". Netoholic just reverted it, saying it misrepresents the policies. (Simple revert, second one so far in 24 hours, in case anybody is counting.) However, I think it should be discussed. Here it is:

A revert, in its simplest form, is a change or an edit made to an article that restores it to a state it had a prior time in the edit history. As explained in Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version, this is typically done by selecting a previous generation of the article from the history for editing, then immediately saving it with no changes. Similarly, administrators have a special "rollback" feature that allows them to revert vandalism quickly on several articles at a time.

Many editors and administrators also consider edits to be reverts if trivial edits are made in conjunction with the restoration of an earlier version, or if the effect of a revert is produced, or essentially so, through a series of edits. These are referred to as "complex reverts".

Some editors and administrators consider any change that undoes a prior edit, even in part, to be a revert. According to some editors, such a "partial revert" might consist, for example, of deleting a single sentence, or even a single word, even though the deletion might reverse only part of a prior edit, or be done in conjunction with other non-trivial changes to an article.

These cases of "complex" and "partial" reverts are important because of the Three revert rule. This rule prohibits an editor from making more than three reverts to the same article during a 24 hour period, and gives administrators discretion to block an editor who violates the rule for up to 24 hours. This rule has been interpreted to apply not only to simple reverts, but also to the other cases as well. Most administrators charged with enforcing the "three revert tule" will apply it to "complex" reverts as well as to "simple" reverts. And occasionally it is applied to "partial reverts", although this is controversial.

--BM 04:00, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If the goal is to make this page into a definition for reverts, then your edit does not accomplish that. I agree that you are being somewhat descriptive of the present confusion, but what we need is for the definition to be clear and uncluttered by "many editors" or "some editors" statements. Also, "Always explain your reverts" is a policy, and your edit washed that statement out of the section. -- Netoholic @ 04:06, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

As I said above, if there is consensus that this article should be/is official policy, then we should go through the process for doing that. In that event, you would be correct that the style of my change would be inappropriate. However, that is not the status quo, and the style of my change is in fact much more in keeping with the current status of the article. No? By the way, where does is state that "Always explain your reverts" is an official policy? -Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines does not in fact mention it. --BM 04:17, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think you're confusing what is "policy" and what is "well-excepted understanding". To illustrate... Wikipedia:Vandalism is not a "policy" page. It is a well-excepted and understood definition for what vandalism constitutes. You'll notice nowhere on that page does it say "some editors think XXX is vandalism". No, it describes what is, and what is not, very clearly. I see Wikipedia:Revert becoming very similar - a well-defined explanation of what a revert is, with links to the associated policies.
"Always explain your reverts" has been policy for quite a while. I only recently moved it to this page, since it is more appropriate here. The "how to" page is honestly not a good fit where it is, and probably should eventually move to Help: . -- Netoholic @ 04:29, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

I understand quite well that Wikipedia:Vandalism is not a policy page. Concerning "Always explain your reverts", the article from which you moved it is not a policy article either, else you shouldn't have been allowed to move it unilaterally. And this isn't a policy article, at present. There may be some as-yet-untested consensus for "Always explain your reverts" as a behavioural precept, but it isn't "policy".

The basic problem with the structure of policy on Wikipedia is that we have pages that are policy, which have been through a formal process to win consensus, and which presumably must go through a similar process to be changed. However, these pages are not self-contained and often contain numerous links to other articles to explain terms and procedures. These linked pages are frequently not "policy". They are just regular articles and don't have to go through any kind of special procedures to be edited. This means that a relatively small number of editors, without any formal consensus at all, can quite dramatically change the meaning of a policy from what it was generally understood to mean when it became a policy. For example, the blocking policy makes it clear that people can be blocked for "vandalism" and there is overwhelming consensus for this. However, "vandalism" is defined by an article that anybody can edit. If a controversy develops over whether such-and-such behaviour should be regarded as vandalism, one side of the controversy can simply edit its definition into the Vandalism article, perhaps unnoticed. As the controversy heats, people will start citing the definition in Vandalism as support for the view that their view is "policy" and "consensus". But that is not necessarily the case. There is something fundamentally broken with that process. Something similar is what is happening with this article. --BM 11:06, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] When is a revert not a revert?

"A revert is a change or an edit made to a page that has the effect of undoing an earlier change or edit on the same page."

This includes simple, complex, partial, ass-backwards, nomic and Chewbaccean reverts, as far as the three-revert rule is concerned.

What we have here is not rewriting of policies—it's effective interpretation of them. The letter of the law versus the spirit of the law. Regardless of what you think of reverts or how admins should apply the 3RR, I dare you to cite something that has been called a revert but does not fall under the crystal-clear definition given above: "a revert is a change or an edit made to a page that has the effect of undoing an earlier change or edit on the same page".

When people are arguing over when X is a revert or not, they are always doing so in the context of whether it should count towards the magic number of three. It is the 3RR which introduces these problems, not the definition of "revert". The 3RR is inherently vulnerable to gaming because it names a hard number, but the benefits are usually considered to outweigh the drawbacks, as per the enormous community support for it.

There is no point in more stringently defining "change", "edit", "having the effect of", or "undoing", and laying down whether a revert is only something that undoes, which seems to be what the edits are aiming at: codifying extant de facto policy in applying the 3RR as de iure policy of how a "revert" is to be defined.

I don't agree with Netoholic when he says BM's edits "misrepresent" policy, but I do think BM is barking up the wrong tree. Policy pages should not get tangled up in legalese, they should define what they have to define as simply and clearly as possible and leave the rest, if any of it needs to be explained, to other pages. A separate page on how and why admins are applying the 3RR the way they do and the associated interpretations of "revert" they use in these cases could be useful—but this page shouldn't be it. This only sets us up for even more gaming, even more discussions, and even more legalese, to the point where nobody can tell a revert from just any edit you don't like (and cynics may contend we've reached that point a few times already).

I haven't even addressed the larger problem BM raised of what it really means that we can just edit policy after the fact. Since that makes my head hurt, I prefer not to for the moment. JRM 12:14, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

JRM, my problem is precisely that the "crystal clear" definition of a revert as an edit that has the effect of undoing a previous edit is (a) not a good definition, and (b) is not the definition of revert that was prevalent when the 3RR was approved. This definition certainly admits "complex reverts", "partial reverts" and so forth. But that is a problem. Another word for a "partial revert" is "edit". Any edit which touches the existing text -- that is, does something other than simply adding entirely new and independent text -- is a "partial revert". All of the following have the "effect" of "undoing" a change made by a previous edit:

  1. removing a comma
  2. removing a word
  3. replacing a word -- the more differnt the meaning the more it is a "revert"
  4. ditto with sentences
  5. negating a sentence by inserting the word "not"
  6. negating a sentence by inserting text that alters its meaning
  7. rewriting an entire paragraph
  8. rewriting an entire section
  9. rewriting the entire article

All of these are "reverts", by definition, since they partially or even wholly undo the effect of a previous edit. But I don't think it is reasonable to consider them so for 3RR purposes. Making these kind of changes is what editing is all about.

I don't understand how they are even to be counted. When do you get to four and overstep the 3RR limit? For example, if I remove four sentences or words in various parts of an article in one edit, is that one "partial revert", or four? Does it make a difference in the counting if the sentences I am touching were added at different times by different people? Can I violate the 3RR in one fell swoop -- one edit in the history -- simply by deleting four sentences? What is the granularity for a partial revert? What if I achieve exactly the same result in four successive edits, resulting in the same end result, but four entries in the edit history. Is that now a 3RR violation?

"Partial reverts" are nonsense. Counting them as reverts (assuming that you know how to count them) means, in effect, that the 3RR prohibits anyone from making more than 3 edits to an article in a 24 hour period, with the sole exception of additions that do not alter the meaning of anything currently in the article. "Complex reverts" are on slightly better ground, but similar arguments could be made about them.

People want to broaden the definition of "revert" so that the 3RR becomes a sword that can be wielded against any "edit warrior", which for some administrators is anyone persisting in making edits to an article with which they do not agree. That was not the original intent of the rule, and I for one do not want to see the 3RR turned into a general weapon that any administrator can use to block anyone who is editing in a fashion of which he does not approve. --BM 12:55, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Now I'm confused, because if I check the edit history of this page, a "revert" has always had the same definition in every revision, except for your latest edits and the attempts to make it a redirect to the how-to. So if you're arguing that it's not "the definition of revert that was prevalent when the 3RR was approved", I'd like to have a reference to what that definition was.

The vibes I'm really getting here is that you want to get this page to a version that reads:

A revert is the action of instating a previous revision of the article through reverting, as per Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version.

And then it's pretty clear why you'd want to make it a redirect, as it's vacuous.

But don't be fooled for one minute into thinking that this definition is beyond weapon forging. The reason things like "partial reverts" and "complex reverts" and who knows what else were explicitly identified is that the 3RR becomes trivial to avoid by just not reverting in the traditional sense, but having a good old-fashioned edit war in which neither side is actually listening to the other or attempting to reach compromise, but just repeating their edits ad nauseam, with some variety thrown in to skirt the 3RR.

The crux is this: edit warring is harmful and should not be allowed to continue unchecked. Protecting a page is a really serious measure that elevates the edit warriors over civilized contributors, so it's only used as a last resort, when nothing else has a hope of stopping the war. The alternative is to give edit warriors a 24-hour kick in the behind and tell them to cool off. To this larger issue, even the question of what is and is not a revert is tangential. Even the 3RR is a derived principle and not a foundation.

This, too, is not perfect: when admins are the edit warriors (directly or indirectly), this quickly breaks down. While abuse of admin power is even more harmful than edit wars, the buck has to stop somewhere. Beyond this there's RFC, RFAr, and the sad ending. The alternative is to compromise on our stance that administrators are trusted (if not them, who?) and that edit warring is a great evil that should not be allowed, for the sake of reader and contributor alike (and if the community has not expressed support for that, what has it expressed support for?)

"I for one do not want to see the 3RR turned into a general weapon that any administrator can use to block anyone who is editing in a fashion of which he does not approve." I put it to you that no amount of editing, rules stipulations, redefinitions and what have you will do anything about this. Not even a bit. There's a lot of quis custodiet ipsos custodes in here, and people try to fix the problems at the lowest level. This doesn't work. Good faith and the ArbCom cluestick do, and the policies, when they go beyond being simple and obvious, only exacerbate the problems rather than alleviate them. JRM 13:30, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

JRM, if you look at the history, the article was a redirect to the "How to revert" article from May 2003 until January 2005. The vote to enforce the 3RR was in November 2004. So at the time that vote took place, a revert was just a "simple" revert, as described in the "How to revert" article. There was no hint of "complex" reverts, "partial reverts", etc.

Now, there are three reasonable futures for this article:

  1. It becomes a policy article that defines "revert" for purposes of the 3RR, and the community hammers out, and get consensus via a vote for those definitions. A much larger group of people than those involved in editing this article since January would be involved.
  2. The revert links in the 3RR policy are changed to go to the "How to revert" article, which is where they went via redirection when the 3RR was adopted as enforcable policy. Then, this article just becomes a comprehensive little NPOV presentation of various possible meanings of "revert" and how the 3RR policy is interpreted by various administrators. It would not be policy, and no attempt would be made to have it seem like it was policy.
  3. The article goes back to being vacuous, as you say -- namely a redirect to the "How To" article -- This is what it was for over nineteen months and until recently, and what it was at the time of the 3RR vote.

--BM 14:25, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You are correct; at the time of voting on the 3RR proposal, there was no definition of "revert", other than the implicit one laid down by the how-to: a revert (noun) was the action of reverting, defined as going to the history, picking an old revision and overwriting the current one (and admin rollbacks, which are the same thing done quicker). That said, it is of course not reasonable to claim that any deviation from this implicit definition invalidates the 3RR policy as having no community support anymore. A vote confirms support; its absence does not mean hordes of protesters may grumble silently for lack of a way to express themselves.

If the status quo of the article is not a reasonable future, as is your opinion, and apparently not Netoholic's, and not ruling out even more "reasonable futures" others could suggest, I would favor option 2. Whatever we do, separation of what policy says (which I firmly believe should be kept as simple and unburdened by legalese as possible) and what are the practical interpretations of the policy (which can get arbitrarily complex) is the most important thing to me. I would be very disappointed if we had to run through option 1, and I don't think I'd be the only one. We don't need more policy, we need a clearer and less roundabout use of what we have. Option 3 is actually option 2 minus the non-policy explanation of how reverts are used; obviously, this can always be added, so there's no real difference except perhaps naming issues.

Should this standalone article go, however, its contents should be merged with WP:RV (not the revert definition, the "explain your reverts" and "reverting as a slap in the face" bits).

That concludes my thoughts on the topic. No doubt others have other things to say. At this point, incidentally, I think putting out an RFC for this article might be a good idea. More people than the handful we have now would be good; I wouldn't even be here if the page hadn't lingered on my watchlist after vandalism once. Reverts seem like a big enough thing to be interested in. JRM 17:04, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

  • At the time of voting for the 3RR, many people indicated (in comments made with their votes or on the talk page associated with the vote) that reverts which also made other changes should be counted. It was thus clear that defining a revert narrowly as "reinstating an earlier version of the page" would be against consensus. Since there was no wikipedia-specific definition of "revert", I naturally assumed that the word had the ordinary meaning which I knew from non-wikipedia contexts, and which I attempted to document in my edit of 25 Jan 2005. I made that edit after discussion at Wikipedia talk:Three-revert rule, and I used almost identical wording for the definition of a revert in a message on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard on 8 Jan 2005. In my understanding, every deletion is a revert, an addition is a revert if and only if it's a re-addition of previously-deleted material, and a rearrangement of things into a different order is a revert if and only if it undoes an earlier rearrangement. This is a very broad definition, and that makes it possible for good edits to exceed three reverts in one day, but that's OK, because there's no requirement for admins to block everybody who exceeds three reverts; admins are free to use their discretion not to block. —AlanBarrett 21:40, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reverting process — too many steps?

Please see discussion at Talk:How to revert and reply there, not here. Thanks! —msh210 03:34, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Common and Useful Example

I put this text back in:

A useful addition is to Wikilink the usernames of who you are reverting from and to. For example, a good edit summary would be

rv edits by 219.148.86.36 to last version by David Shear

The clickable links are created by entering [[User:000.000.000.000|000.000.000.000]] (replacing 000.000.000.000 with the real IP address or [[User:Username|Username]] for logged-in users, replacing Username with their real username.

because it was taken out with the explanation of "not common nor particularly useful." However, I find it strange that you would say it's not common nor useful, Dan100, yet your last three reverts all have wikified edit summaries...? --Michael (talk) 04:30, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Revert vandalism "template"

I'm relatively new to this, but it seems to me that if one is reverting vandalism, the edit summary should say something like

rv vandalism by 219.148.86.36 to last version by David Shear

Comments? Suggestions? Rotton fruit? Arthur Rubin | (talk) 18:33, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism?

Does the Three Revert Rule apply to correcting vandalism as well? (deleting inappropriate words randomly inserted by vandals, for example) Yuyudevil 17:48, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Status of this page

Is this a guideline? Policy? Neither? android79 22:35, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it something between a guideline and an explanation of a typical wikipedia term/phenomenon. Andries 23:41, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed merge

There's no page at Help:Revert. If the merge has already been executed, you may want to delete the merge template from the top of the page. --Cjmnyc 05:13, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

  • For some obscure reason, the merge template doesn't work when linking to a page in another namespace. I've fixed it now. Radiant_>|< 11:19, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I like it better than the Help:Revert page -- better for a quick read / understand, and this is the one that comes up when you use the search box. --81.6.234.170 00:01, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vibber's admonition

The long-standing admonition against using rollback as a tool in a revert war should remain. Radiant! has called the quote confusing and suggested it should be moved to wikiquote, as some kind of curio, I suppose. I guess one could call it confusing, so allow me to paraphrase: edit warring is such a discreditable act in the first place that it is inconceivable a sysop would engage in it. Just because we now have a problem where sysops in fact do so, and even feel justified in doing so, is not a reason to remove the well-stated warning. And just because Brion happens to say it well, and so he's therefore quoted, does not mean that it isn't emblematic of proper conduct. Demi T/C 16:30, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Sorry, but no. You're missing the middle ground here... the quote implies that the revert button may only be used against vandalism, which is a common misconception. Nobody agrees with using the revert button in a content dispute, but per WP:AAP consensus agrees that it can be used in other cases that are neither vandalism nor a content dispute. As such, the quote is confusing because it enforces a common misconception. Radiant_>|< 17:29, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
    • We have a long-standing prohibition against admins unblocking themselves, too. The only reason to use that to mean "You can't unblock yourself if you're blocked by accident" or other such well-established exceptions is if you're reading it as a legal code, which is not what we're writing. The explicit thrust of the section anyway is to not use it as a weapon in an edit war, which you apparently agree is appropriate. If you really have a problem with the quote, could we agree on specific language prohibiting using rollback in an edit war? Merely advising using "caution and restraint" is insufficient. Demi T/C 19:08, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Yes, I really have a problem with the quote, because it starts with the words "Its intent is solely to be a timesaving shortcut for reverting mass vandalism", and has already been used by wikilawyering people to attack admins using it for other reasons. I have no problem with specific language prohibiting using rollback in an edit war, nor with temporarily blocking admins that do use it in edit wars. Radiant_>|< 19:17, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
        • Oh, fair enough. It's an incomplete quote anyway, so I've omitted quoting the "intent" portion (and wasn't completely quoted anyway). I like the way Brion says it so I've kept it in, but I'm not averse to someone restating it they feel it's necessary. Demi T/C 19:44, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
          • That sounds good, thanks. Radiant_>|< 19:55, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Should vandalism reverts be marked minor?

Should vandalism be marked minor? Is there a policy on it? Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 00:18, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Reverting vandalism can be marked as minor, yes. Admins have an automatic "undo" button that does that, and with some creative javascripting non-admin-users do mostly the same. >Radiant< 01:05, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I think the reasoning behind it is that it brings the page back to what it was before the vandalism, so there's no reason for RC patrollers to look at it. (They sometimes have minor edits disabled, and anons aren't able to mark edits as minor.) AnnH (talk) 01:09, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. That makes sense. Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 01:45, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] partial revert

I removed this text that was added a day ago:

A partial revert undoes only some of those changes.

It falls under m:instruction creep, as it changes policy from its link with the 3RR page. It makes what used to be a very simple rule into something more complex. We need to keep the revert page very simple, as many sources say that a revert is to go back to a previous state. If there is need for a partial revert explaination or anything to the like, then it be on a new page. Let's keep it simple. — Dzonatas 14:52, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I've reverted it. See discussion ongoing at Wikipedia talk:Three revert rule. · Katefan0(scribble)/poll 22:36, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
There was no consensus to add it to this page. — Dzonatas 13:09, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I plan to change it to move it to bottom of page as link and further stub. This will help simplify the page. — Dzonatas 15:46, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I prefer it the way it is. It's an important and useful clarification. Tom Harrison Talk 16:08, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Then I have made an attempt to collaborate on this and clarify it further. — Dzonatas 16:20, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Please stop fiddling with the page William M. Connolley 16:33, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Please, negotiate. From ArbCom, "When disagreements arise, users are expected to discuss their differences rationally rather than reverting ad infinitum." — Dzonatas 22:16, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
There's been a lot of talk. The problem is that you don't like the consensus. I suspect that the problem is that you want to contribute something, anything, to this; but unfortunately the page doesn't need your help. Or indeed anyone elses, really; its about OK for now. William M. Connolley 22:31, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
There's been a lack of discussion. You believe there is a consensus, but there are facts otherwise. There are users that see problems with the policy on different levels. Also, to state "the page doesn't need your help" is really harsh. Since I have met you on here, I have only seen you discourage my ability to edit. It looks pretty mean from my side. However, I try to give you the benefit of the doubt, and possibly you have misunderstood something. I don't see much talk between me and you to really work on improvement. You have your views of a perfect article and others have their views. When I noticed you blocked me in less then 10 minutes from the time Koot posted the entry on the AN/3RR, I doubt you took the time to read my edits and even compare them to Koot's attempts. What you saw is a few users write in a way that looked like they are upset with me. Looks like peer pressure? It kind of resembles what has happened here and on the 3RR page, except their are major differences. Just because you don't like my style doesn't mean you should tell me to "stay out." How would you like it if others told you that? Anyways, what I ran into on the Computer science page was a first. All the other pages have been different -- less to no personal attacks and actual discussion even under complete disagreement. We also disagree here, and the consensus is simply we disagree.
Just work with me. It is not my intent to damage Wikipedia. The 3RR page can be improved. You know it. What has happened on the 3RR page is to give absolutely no chance for some users to improve it. It gives impression that only a select group is able to do that, and that creates distrust. In essense, you say "the page doesn't need your help" is like you don't trust me. That lack of trust is directly reflected into the the articles themselves. Anotherwords, if we have wikipedians that can't trust each other, especially admins, then how are we suppose to trust the content of the articles? — Dzonatas 23:01, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge tag

Should the merge tag be removed? It seems that it is already quasi-merged at Help:Reverting#Wikipedia-specific content. We could just make this a redirect to that page and move the talk page to an archive or section on that talk page. Jfingers88 00:16, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RCPatrol Poss. Template

Following the guidelines on being bold, I'm now using a template with popups: popupRevertSummary = 'rcprv %s' Is this okay, by the general consensus? I will continue to use it under the rule suggested above, but wanted to post it just to be sure. Xyrael 21:37, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Revert trolls problem

Increasingly, I see reverts not for any problem in the improvements I contributed, but with the given reason that my little essay explaining them insufficient to placate the reverter. The essay appears only in the History section. Our mission with Wikipedia is a world-beating encyclopedia, not a world-beating set of edit descriptions.

Part of the burgeoning problem may be a snippet that I saw somewhere in Wikipedia's instructions incautiously encouraging reverting changes as a way to get discussions started. This section should be clarified to indicate that the reasons for the revert should be stated in full -- i.e., giving the reasons why the original article text was deemed superior. What I'm seeing instead is demands to make the little essay explaining the changes (which are in any event self-explanatory) a better essay, without saying what was lacking with it in the first place (my little essays often take up much or all of the space allowed in the little "Edit summary" field as it is).

The proliferation of these "Revert Trolls" diminishes my enthusiasm for contributing to Wikipedia. An effective mechanism for identifying them and shutting them down or educating them about the inadvisability of failing to follow the reverting guidelines is needed.