SmashWiki talk:Only revert once

Directly conflicts with 3RR. Guideline, or essay, certainly. But policy, it shan't be. --Sky (t · c · w) 03:52, 30 January 2009 (UTC) Yeah, it is unnecessary bureaucracy. Before SmashWiki became part of Wikia, there were no such pages. People got along peachily, blocks/bans got handed out when necessary, and life was good. However, the rules are just as much to protect the people as to protect the wiki. This point of too small/having too many admins is a tangent that you're going on here, and perhaps more than anything you are misunderstanding. It was a point that with 5-6 active administrators, there is no bureaucracy on the totem pole. Simply compare all the people you have to deal with on Wikipedia when you need to deal with the administrative side. This is what I meant by small wiki in this case. For a tendentious editor, all that has to happen is that someone needs to poke an administrator to come deal with it, whatever he might need to do. --Sky (t · c · w) 02:57, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The premise behind 3RR is less apt at covering what it was intended to do, and contains gigantic technicalities with a high possibility of potential abuse. With 3RR, I am not permitted to revert any amount of edits on Falcon Knee more than 3 times a day. What happens if 9001 users come and add a dumb/pointless note to the page? Will you ban me for removing bad information? Policy says so. (Don't argue that discretion wins, because even though it does, one should generally try to avoid flat out ignoring policy even though their cause is just. Usually it is excusable, and this would be one of those times, but that doesn't really matter- adopting better policies > ignoring bad ones.)
 * 1RV is better suited to handling mass-reverts. Rather than creating an arbitrary "don't revert more than this" line that does not take into account the content under dispute (excepting vandalism), 1RV revolves upon the content under scrutiny, which specifically prevents edit wars. It also requires discussion, which is preferable in almost all cases where there is conflict. 1RV is more suitable to it's purpose, and therefore would benefit the wiki better than 3RR. --  Shadow  crest  00:46, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, let me see. Your first example blatantly fails. That's quite distinctly what 3RR does not say; your example easily falls under "Reverting basic vandalism". I.e. Discretion wins. Simple as that. Your line is as arbitrary as 3RR is. Besides, 1RV fails (gracefully) on a wiki this size, where administrators can take care of any potential abusers much quickly and with less bureaucracy than in other places. --Sky (t · c · w) 00:55, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you truly believe that people with good intentions adding notes that should be removed anyway is equivalent to vandalism? If so, lrn2wiki again. If someone adds a note on Knee Smash that it's strong finisher: Is their note made in good faith? Yes. Is the information true? Yes. Is it vandalism? No. Should it be removed anyway for other reasons, such as redundancy? Yeah. Does 3RR stop me from reverting not just this pointless note but additionally &#8734;-2 pointless notes added within 24h? Yeah. Will it happen? Maybe not. Can you prove it won't? No.
 * ...that's quite explicitly what it says. The only things exempt from 3rr are "reverting your own changes, fixing simple vandalism, removing posts made by a banned or blocked user"; as noted above, bad notes/trivia/etc != vandalism.
 * "Discretion wins." I said that. But that isn't an argument for 3rr/ against 1RV; it's basically a statement of fact. If you're going to argue that we can/do/should ignore the rules set up simply because they're unneeded due to discretion, why bother creating the policy pages at all? Sounds like some unnecessary bureaucracy to me, hm?
 * You said that stuff about this wiki being too small/having too many admins before; I didn't believe it then, and I don't believe it now. If a vandal can go on vandalizing for 2 hours during the afternoon without getting a ban, then there's something not going right. Additionally, how does "dealing with potential abusers faster" apply? -- Shadow  crest  01:28, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * If they can't figure it out that it's not welcome by the third time, than this "policy" is just a weapon against you and not them. By 3rr, bad notes == vandalism.
 * Then 3rr is doin it rong. If 9001 people add 9001 stupid but entirely unrelated notes to a page, then how are they supposed to figure out their note is going to be unwelcome when it's unrelated to the others and they believe it is a valid note?
 * Happens the same now, zzz, less QQ more pew pew etc
 * ok. I still missed the point of the tangent. --  Shadow  crest  15:53, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

useless convos
We have a revert policy already. (holds up a shotgun) Hasta la vista, baby. (blasts the hell out of it, Terminator style.)Silvie (talk) 04:35, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I hope I don't need to explain to you how completely unnecessary of a comment that was. Semicolon (talk) 04:35, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Demotion to guideline
To this date, 1RV is without a doubt the least followed and most problematic policy on the site, and for a good reason. The trouble is, even with the rather vague exceptions listed on this policy page, it is quite common for situations to arise in which following this policy is not necessarily the best course of action. This should never be the case with a good policy, and it is because of this that I propose that this policy be demoted to a guideline, similarly to how wikipedia handles this issue, with 1RV being merely a guideline, and staff enforcement of it only being carried out in the case of clear counter-productive edit warring, reminiscent of the 3 revert rule.  Alex the  Jigglypuff trainer  16:27, June 18, 2019 (EDT)
 * Support This policy has caused problems for me on more than one occasion, namely that I've reverted edits that break this policy to remind people of the policy, which according to the policy, is a violation of the policy. Awesomelink234, the Super Cool Gamer  Leave a message if needed 16:29, June 18, 2019 (EDT) Changing to oppose per SK and Flare.  Awesomelink234, the Super Cool Gamer  Leave a message if needed 20:23, June 18, 2019 (EDT)
 * Neutral I say we either demote this to a guideline, or at least edit it to be more specific. I don't exactly think it's out of the question that we could simply do the latter. -- Meat Ball  104  MB104Pic2.jpg 18:31, June 18, 2019 (EDT)
 * Support: I’ve edit warred too many edit warrers. Lou Cena (talk) 19:35, June 18, 2019 (EDT)

Absolutely not. I am not having people edit warring more because "this is not a policy anymore". The fact that this is the "least followed policy" means that we need to enforce it more, not throw it away.  Serpent King  20:11, June 18, 2019 (EDT)

No. Just straight up no. Per Serpent, you're basically encouraging edit warring. A move like this will only worsen the situation. Disaster Flare   (talk)  20:14, June 18, 2019 (EDT)

Oppose. Same as Serpent King and Disaster Flare, can only promote edit warring. Spexx (talk) 20:23, June 18, 2019 (EDT)

Oppose. You should've advocated for a revision of the policy if you think it's flawed, instead of trying to axe it altogether. If you have problems with a policy, you can ask the admins to look it over and see if something about it could be fixed. Hinata (talk) 20:30, June 18, 2019 (EDT)

In true midwestern fashion, yea no. Parroting SK, this is easily the least followed policy (even I don't follow it all the time, I'll admit), but that doesn't mean we should bring it down. We don't need things to take up tons of space in the RC; otherwise, edits are impossible to keep track of, arguments become tedious to actually stop, and traffic goes through the roof. Aidan, the Rurouni  20:31, June 18, 2019 (EDT)

'''Get outta here. Discussion closed.''' This would only make it harder to enforce correctly. Toomai Glittershine The Celeritous 20:39, June 18, 2019 (EDT)

Wow, ok so I just got home to find that this discussion appears to have exploded, and I think some people here, particularly the administrators, don't really seem to understand what I'm proposing here. I'm not proposing that we do away with edit warring altogether, I'm simply saying we should make our stance on it a bit more liberal. So first, let me clarify what I'm actually proposing here in the hopes that we can stop attacking strawmen.


 * 1) Edit warring should not be treated like an if → then algorithm, as the issue is a bit more complicated than that. Simply stating that reverting another user's reversion is verboten clearly doesn't work, and it's more helpful to take things case-by-case, with administrators deciding what does and doesn't constitute an edit-war. This should not be controversial, as this is essentially already the case, despite technically not being in the spirit of this being a policy. Administrators already generally tend to treat the policy like this, presumably because they are aware that the issue is more nuanced that this policy makes it out to be, whether they support it being a policy or not.
 * 2) Reverting more than once should be discouraged, but should not necessarily be assumed to be an edit war right away. For example, I've actually seen a fair few instances of one user reverting another user's revert, and leaving a clear edit summary explanation, after which the initial reverter understands why their reversion was erroneous. This process works considerably better that leaving a message on the article's talk page, especially since unlike Wikipedia we don't have a ping function on SmashWiki.
 * 3) A 3 revert rule should be implemented, which will be a policy which functions similarly to the way the Wikipedia policy of the same name functions, although with the 24-hour rule omitted, as SmashWiki tends to work slower than Wikipedia does. This allows exceptions only for edits such as vandalism, blatantly false information and userspace editing. This will be treated as policy, as at this stage it becomes very clear that administrative intervention is required. Administrators can of course intervene earlier should they see it as necessary, but this will not always be necessary which is one of the reasons for this proposal.

I understand that I may not have been very clear before so I hope that this clears things up for some people. Now I would like to address some comments I am seeing.

Serpent King: 'I am not having people edit warring more because "this is not a policy anymore"'. To be clear, I am not suggesting that edit warring as a whole becomes a guideline, I am saying that the 1 revert rule is highly flawed and that reverting more than once is not always automatically an edit war. Edit warring is still "against the rules" as it were, but a more human approach needs to be taken towards it due to 1RV clearly not working as intended.

Hinata: 'You should've advocated for a revision of the policy if you think it's flawed, instead of trying to axe it altogether'. That is precisely what I am trying to do. I'm proposing that a 3 revert rule would work better as the hard policy, with the 1 revert rule being a guideline.

Toomai: 'This would only make it harder to enforce correctly' & Aidanzapunk: '  [addressing why 1RV should remain a policy]  edits are impossible to keep track of, arguments become tedious to actually stop, and traffic goes through the roof'. I think that there's good reason to believe that this would not cause the problems that some people are concerned it will cause. At the risk of people bombarding me with SW:NOT comments, I think Wikipedia serves as evidence that this kind of approach to dealing with edit wars works just fine. Despite Wikipedia being considerably busier than SmashWiki is, the admins don't appear to be having much trouble dealing with edit wars when they come up. With how much easier it will be to spot edit wars on SmashWiki due to recent changes being much easier to use here, I see no reason to believe that there will be much issue with this.

And that's about what I have to say. I request for this discussion to be reopened, with the clarifications I have made above.  Alex the  Jigglypuff trainer  06:32, June 19, 2019 (EDT)
 * Your proposal was quite clearly to "change this from a policy to a guideline", but your explanation says what you actually wanted was "change the existing policy to make it more lenient". If that's the case try a new discussion with the text of what you think the new policy should look like. Toomai Glittershine [[Image:Toomai.png|20px|link=User:Toomai/Bin|???]] The Producer 06:41, June 19, 2019 (EDT)
 * Yes, admittedly I was far too vague with my initial proposal. I thought it was clear by me linking to Wikipedia's policy on edit warring that I was suggesting we handle things the way they do, but I can see now that that wasn't clear at all. That being said, I am proposing that 1RV be a guideline. The issue is I don't think 1RV is a good way of enforcing the prevention of edit warring, and that instead it should be dealt with by a combination of the judgement of administrators, and a 3 revert rule (which would be treated the way 1RV is currently supposed to be treated), because it's at that point that I think it becomes clear that no progress is being made.


 * I'd say the 3 points I made above are essentially what I think our new policy on edit warring should look like, so is it ok if I re-open the discussion with that?  Alex the  Jigglypuff trainer  06:49, June 19, 2019 (EDT)
 * "try a new discussion with the text of what you think the new policy should look like" Toomai Glittershine [[Image:Toomai.png|20px|link=User:Toomai/Bin|???]] The Metroid 06:56, June 19, 2019 (EDT)

Reforming our policies on edit warring
Edit warring is an issue which is present on all wikis, and it's an issue which, in my opinion, our policy on is rather poor. To this date, 1RV is without a doubt the least followed and most problematic policy on the site, and for a good reason. The trouble is, even with the rather vague exceptions listed on this policy page, it is quite common for situations to arise in which this policy simply doesn't work very well, and I believe that Wikipedia's approach to handling the issue is considerably better than ours is. For this reason, I propose that we reform our policy on edit warring, making the changes outlined below:


 * 1) Edit warring should not be treated like an if → then algorithm, as the issue is a bit more complicated than that. Simply stating that reverting another user's reversion is verboten clearly doesn't work, and it's more helpful to take things case-by-case, with administrators deciding what does and doesn't constitute an edit-war. Interestingly, this is quite similar to how many administrators already handle the issue, despite technically not being in the spirit of 1RV being a hard policy. Edit warring is not really a black and white issue, so we should not treat it as such, but unfortunately this is precisely how our current 1RV policy is intended to treat it.
 * 2) A 3 revert rule should be implemented, which will be a policy which functions similarly to the way the Wikipedia rule of the same name functions, although with the 24-hour time period either omitted or extended considerably, as SmashWiki tends to work slower than Wikipedia does. This will be treated as policy, as it at this stage that it becomes very clear that progress is not being made, and that administrative intervention is required. Administrators can of course intervene earlier should they see it as necessary, but this will not always be necessary which is one of the reasons for this proposal.
 * 3) Reverting more than once should be discouraged, but should not necessarily be assumed to be an edit war right away. This would mean that the current 1RV policy be demoted to a guideline, with 3RR taking its place. For example, I've actually seen a fair few instances of one user reverting another user's revert, and leaving a clear edit summary explanation, after which the initial reverter understands why their reversion was erroneous.
 * 4) A fresh policy page needs to be written, which explains what edit warring is, why it is a problem, and how administrators will deal with it. It will also include the 3 revert rule, and information on what the best course of action for users to take is when administrators are not around, including 1RV as a recommended approach in situations where reverting would be unproductive, and would likely lead to an edit war.

I believe that Wikipedia serves as evidence that this kind of approach to dealing with edit wars works considerably better than ours does, and thus I propose that the above changes be made to reform our policy on edit warring.  Alex the  Jigglypuff trainer  07:27, June 19, 2019 (EDT)
 * In the spirit of giving things a redo, I shall give this another fair shot and break it down.
 * I noticed this with your last try for this proposal, though it's more prominent here: from the way you're approaching this, it seems you're trying to make us more like Wikipedia, which we aren't. It was one of the fundamental things I learned throughout my first few years, and I'm surprised it took as long as it did for someone (yes, I know it was me) to set into stone that it's a thing we aren't. (Here's that SW:NOT comment you mentioned)
 * Edit warring is, for all intents and purposes, when two or more people debate over a particular piece of information, and an agreement has not been reached (as of the moment of the hypothetical edit war). It's not really a case-by-case thing, since that is what it is.
 * I will admit that simply reverting once does not mean an edit war. But we would like it to not get to the point of being an edit war, which is why we say "take it to the talk page". Granted, that doesn't really take up much less space in the RC than an edit war (in fact, if more users are involved, it could potentially take up more space), but it is much more concise, easier to keep track of, and, if you ask me, a lot better for the agreement process in general. (There's also the fact that talk pages have much more space than an edit summary box, but semantics.)
 * I commend your change of approach with this the second time around, but I still see problems with this. Though, admittedly, I'm less opposed to this than I was the first time around. Maybe it's just me, and I'm willing to be persuaded, but as of right now, I'm still lightly opposing this, but also leaning towards neutral. Aidan,  the Rurouni  12:35, June 19, 2019 (EDT)
 * I will try to address these points as best I can.


 * "From the way you're approaching this, it seems you're trying to make us more like Wikipedia, which we aren't", that's not exactly what I'm trying to do. The point of me bringing up Wikipedia is to back up my claim that this new system would work better than the old one. I agree that our policy should not be identical to theirs. In fact, I already mentioned one difference I thought of right away, that we should remove the caveat about waiting 24 hours, since we get considerably less activity here, and because I don't think waiting an arbitrary amount of time necessarily makes it ok. But I'm getting off topic, the point was that Wikipedia was a case study if you will, a demonstration of how something like this can work, even on active wikis.


 * "It's not really a case-by-case thing, since that is what it is". Perhaps, but suppose one of the users quickly concedes that the other user is correct, then would you call this an edit war? What if a user adds a balance change to a fighter article, another user undoes it, and then the original user re-does the edit showing the relevant data changes to back it up, would you call this an edit war? Sometimes it's not as simple as "user X hit undo, so their edit must stand unless a discussion occurs", and that's why it can be beneficial to take things case-by-case.


 * "I will admit that simply reverting once does not mean an edit war. But we would like it to not get to the point of being an edit war, which is why we say "take it to the talk page"". I agree that this is generally a good idea, which is why I think 1RV has some value as a guideline, but I don't agree that it is always the best course of action, which is why I am not happy with 1RV being mandatory in every single scenario that does not involve vandalism.


 * So that's what I have to say in response, and let me know if you have any more concerns.  Alex the  Jigglypuff trainer  12:54, June 19, 2019 (EDT)

Let me take your points one at a time: And that's all I've got.  Serpent King  13:54, June 19, 2019 (EDT)
 * 1) I do agree that reverting is not a black and white situation, some cases take some thought before calling a 1RV breach.
 * 2) An editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page—whether involving the same or different material —within a 24-hour period. - WP:3RR Wanted to put more clearly what the 3RR was on here...Now here's why I am against it:
 * 3) You explicitly stated that you wanted to get away from this policy being an if->then rule, but this to me is essentially just that.
 * 4) When you say that you want to get rid of the 24 hour part, I assume you mean to extend it, because to say that "well you had 3 reverts on this article last year, and now that we are arguing over a completely different topic, this is going to apply, so I win by default" is obviously BS. That being the case, the amount of time would need to be clearly defined.
 * 5) Policy would, in a worse case scenario, allow 3 reverts per user on one article, one right after another. This would be a clear edit war and should be prohibited.
 * 6) Reversions of reversions should occur only in cases where there is clear misinformation (in which the reverter is able to provide verification/proof) vandalism, edits that break the page or format, breaches of SW:CONSENSUS, etc, etc, etc. There are a lot more reasons to revert a revert than just misinfo and vandalism, and I think the better option is to more clearly express them then try to roll out an all new system. That being said, is true that, in all cases except vandalism, it is much more effective for the two users to talk it out than to constantly switch back and forth between revisions, and I think that is what the original writing of this policy was trying to express. Also, no matter what, I do not like the idea of having both a policy and a guideline used to tackle edit warring, it would get too messy.
 * 7) A more concise description of edit warring (what it is, how it's handled, how it can be avoided, etc) would be welcome.
 * "You explicitly stated that you wanted to get away from this policy being an if->then rule, but this to me is essentially just that". Eh, I guess...but my main contention with 1RV is that it applies the if → then scenario whether it's helpful or not. The 3 revert rule is more liberal, and is essentially an absolute maximum for when it becomes really clear that a discussion is the only way forward.


 * "Policy would, in a worse case scenario, allow 3 reverts per user on one article, one right after another. This would be a clear edit war and should be prohibited", I've already addressed this in my proposal: "Administrators can of course intervene earlier should they see it as necessary". This policy change places no restrictions on an administrator's ability to intervene in cases where an edit war would clearly ensue, it is simply a case of recognising that reverting a revert does not always do this, and that rather than following a strict 1RV policy in all situations, administrators should use their judgement on each case, and decide whether there is cause for concern, because sometimes there won't be. Again, a lot of admins already inadvertently follow this sort of behaviour, and violations of 1RV happen very frequently, with them not necessarily leading to edit wars. This, I feel, is all the more reason why we should update our policies to reflect this.


 * "Also, no matter what, I do not like the idea of having both a policy and a guideline used to tackle edit warring, it would get too messy". I don't mean we should have 2 separate pages, one for 1RV and one for the full edit warring policy. As I mentioned in 4, it would be included in the new edit warring page itself as a recommended course of action in most circumstances. I don't really see how this would be "messy".


 * I don't know if we'll agree on 3RR, but I think we can at least agree that 1RV needs a major update to detail the issue of edit warring as a whole, and I also strongly contend "only revert once" being the subject of the article, even if 1RV remains policy.  Alex the  Jigglypuff trainer  14:13, June 19, 2019 (EDT)
 * I can definitely agree that the policy is outdated and doesn't always fit our needs at present. I am going to draft something together right now and see where that leaves us.  Serpent King  14:31, June 19, 2019 (EDT)

Support This policy definitely needs some changes. Awesomelink234, the Super Cool Gamer Leave a message if needed 14:51, June 19, 2019 (EDT)

User:Serpent King/Sandbox/1RV rewrite  Serpent King  15:02, June 19, 2019 (EDT)

I would like to know how this change would work under example: so I made an edit to All-Out Attack stating that pausing does not function while the attack plays out, which was reverted with the user in question stating that it seemed to apply to every single Final Smash. By my own testing and a few people I have asked, this is simply not true, but rather than reverting this, which would under current standards be a policy violation (the key point is that reverts of reverts that remove important information from a page are a violation of 1RV), I instead posted to the article's talk page, inquiring what parameters they tested this under that would yield a different result from my testing. Now keep in mind, this was two months ago, and I have not gotten a response, even though the talk page was used mere days ago now. Never mind the fact that I added that information to pause's page and no edits have been made to that page since. Where my confusion lies is whom the burden of proof is on: the user adding the information, or the user removing it. - EndGenuity (talk) 15:20, June 19, 2019 (EDT)
 * That's sticky. Inclination would place burden of proof on the user trying to remove it, being that they should not attempt to do so without a leg to stand on.  Serpent King  15:27, June 19, 2019 (EDT)

I have also created a draft for a re-write of the policy in question, since it appears as though people generally want to keep 1RV as policy, but I'm not particularly fond of SK's approach. User:Trainer Alex/Edit warring.  Alex the  Jigglypuff trainer  15:29, June 19, 2019 (EDT)
 * Only issue I have with that is that it doesn't mention that use of the talk page is preferable. Cut that in (and maybe reword the "may land the user in hot water" bit, it sounds a bit too cheeky for a supposed-to-be-serious policy) and we're good.  Serpent King  15:35, June 19, 2019 (EDT)