Thoughts on the edit warring policy

Lately, I have returned to work a bit in the ban appeals thread given the lengthy backlog and there are a number of people suspended for edit warring. Our policy is quite strict: Restoring your edit only once already counts, and I've seen people suspended for restoring someone else's edit.

I am wondering if that is a bit too strict:

• A single restoration often does not result in a prolonged back-and-forth, which is really the kind of situation that the policy is there to prevent.
• On Wikipedia edit warring requires multiple restorations, not just one, except in certain contentious areas or when people are clearly trying to dodge the bright-lines. As the saying goes "3RR is a bright line, not an entitlement", but nor is a single restoration considered edit warring.
• There are people asking whether reverting yourself counts as edit warring, and they aren't newbies.
• There is the big caveat on the policy page itself, about "policy-compliant edits".
• Finally, from reading Ask The Tropers, I get the impression that a lot of edit warring reports come from third parties. These third parties could be opening the discussion/messaging people/moving contested entries to discussion themselves instead of immediately running to the moderators.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I questioned this in the Wiki & Forum policy thread a few weeks ago. I've long held the opinion that yes, this is too strict.

Edited by JHD0919 on Dec 24th 2023 at 9:23:25 AM

This is Idol Tap. (My Troper Wall)

I definitely feel the same way as well. I peer into the edit banned/suspended thread sometimes, and it seems like a significant number of people are there for simply edit warring. I’ve never been suspended for edit warring, but given that we consider a single restoration to be outright edit warring, it seems like far too easy of a mistake to make for a website with a three-strikes policy.

I’d argue that not only should a minimum of two or three restorations be required to count as an edit war, but when it comes to being suspended for the first time, a mod ought to give a user a warning first, and only suspend them fully if they continue. Being warned by an authority figure may be enough to encourage some to stop and thus avoid a full suspension, and we’d only need to do it prior to one’s first suspension—after that, it would be insta-suspension for offenses.

To give an example:

• Hypothetical Troper is adding many ZCEs to pages, and are ignoring notifiers sent by users.
• They get reported in ATT.
• They receive a message from a moderator explaining the policy regarding ZCEs and are told to stop, lest they be suspended.
• If Hypothetical Troper learns their lesson, they will make sure to avoid adding ZCEs from there on so they will not face more serious consequences.
• If they continue to add ZCEs, however, they will be suspended fully. If unsuspended, the single-error rule will apply—if they continue to add ZCEs or break the site policy in some other way, they will be instantly suspended.

back lol

Yeah, I'm not sure that "your first offence is a ban because that's the easiest way to get your attention" tends to be proportionate.

Plus, it seems like the tendency to just pull one person out of it entirely and not try to at least get them to take it to the proper venues first (assuming there's not a repeated pattern of behaviour) must leave a lot of contentious edits... well, never properly resolved.

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Yeah...an edit being reinstated after it was specifically removed for a reason can be annoying and all but a suspension over that single edit is pretty overkill. Sometimes simply saying "Word Cruft" or "Justifying Edit" generalizes what may have been wrong with the original entry but doesn't really invalidate it in the eyes of who wrote it (doubly so now that there are pre-defined edit reasons), and those aren't as contentious as, say, the more "commanding" side of editing no-no's like Repair, Don't Respond, and even in those cases I think a lot of the confusion can be chalked up to hidden notes being confused for regular entries or whatever.

I think the site's gotten a bit better about this over the years with all the changes made to TLP, since that sprung a more clear dissonance of "don't edit a draft without asking" vs. "don't restore something without following the proper guidelines", and (most) people on the site have the basic courtesy to not do the former, but under the right circumstances it should be made clear that nobody should really hold anyone else to a different "standard" automatically when it comes to TLP edits vs. page edits. I think that's a big reason why there's so much contention about what to do with ban evader edits that aren't necessarily invalid on both types of pages, and someone who thinks that and re-restores an entry from a banned user as a result can get out-and-out accused of being a ban evader based on that bit of history alone, which shows how edit wars really shouldn't be treated as something so black-and-white.

Silver and gold, silver and gold

Hmmmm.

I'm of two minds here.

On one hand I think it's understandable that the rule was written to be strict, if only because it makes the issue real easy to deal with. If it crosses into edit war territory, suddenly all you have to do is report the edit war and resolve the issue at ATT, and the troper(s) involved will get stopped before things have a chance to escalate. If nothing else it's an efficient way to deal with conflicts, especially in the scenario where one person just doesn't seem willing to relent or slow down.

On the other hand... I'm forced to think back to the times I got scared I'd be banned for reverting someone's edit to a sandbox of mine, or when there was mass confusion because the rules got stealthily changed without warning — both to include the "no edit reason" clause and to re-define "edit warring" as any broader conflict, all of which people found out not through announcement but through an Edit Banned post. In the former case, I'd done a change as minor as "undo a formatting change on a Wick Check made by someone hopping a work's related tab", and yet still needed to ask for permission because in that scenario I would've technically been edit warring. In the latter, people were shocked and horrified at the idea that an "A adds, B cuts, C reverts" scenario could be considered an edit war especially because until that point we all had the understanding that an edit war was an instant ban offense.

So... while I've never necessarily thought that the ABA chain rule needed to change, I do acknowledge that the rules can cause a lot of unnecessary stress and confusion, not helped by the fact that it's entirely possible to revert an edit unknowingly. We've all probably done it at least once just by not checking the history, and on some cases it's only misfortune that someone's edit war gets caught.

What do I think needs to change?

Well, I think that suspending after just one revert is what causes most if not all of the fear for people like me, who are aware of the rules and has to try and avoid breaking them in even minor and silly ways. It's also not all that fair for this to be the one rule where we ban first and explain second; with early every other offense ^note I think rogue launching may be the other notable one, beyond obvious vandalism, people are expected to be sent notifiers or warnings and they have every opportunity to change their behavior before a ban occurs. Meanwhile, with an edit war, people more often than not don't even realize that they were breaking the rules and are then banned, which feels backwards. At the very least it should be routine to send these tropers links to discussion pages or ATT pings to discuss the edit, and then if the edit war continues it's at that point that it makes sense to ban.

Similarly, I think that we should be more lenient on newer tropers; people who may not even know what the history page is or that there's a way to converse with other tropers. Tropers who have been around for longer, I think it's more justified to suspend them since they are expected to understand the edit war rules, but newbies who have an edit war as their first offense — it seems almost mean to give them their first Edit Ban strike just for that alone. We may also want to look at factors beyond the simple cycle; for instance if they're arguing in edit reasons then they're clearly aware that someone is warring with them, while someone who simply adds an example back after several weeks may have legitimately thought they were just correcting a mistake or something (it's a common enough justification from people in EB).

All in all, I think the main issue is the automatic suspension and the fact that every troper is held to the same consequences regardless of scenario (unless they were lucky enough to fall into the "fixing a rule break" clause, which at some points may be as simple as "oh, well B forgot to give an edit reason that time"). I don't think the rule itself needs to be altered, I think our response to the rule breaking does. I think things would be a lot less stressful for people if EB was reserved for people who had broken rules they were warned about beforehand, instead of so many people ending up there for a simple accident or misunderstanding.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 24th 2023 at 1:23:14 PM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Well, I do think the ABA rule needs to change, as all the problems mentioned in the OP and many mentioned in your post come from it. Having a rule leads to people enforcing it; "the rule says X but we only action if Y" is not a reasonable basis for rules-making.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I mean, a majority of other rulebreaks don't lead to instant suspensions, though. Context issues don't. Rudeness issues don't. Indentation doesn't. Sometimes not even bad grammar does. Heck, I've even see people get off lightly for things like hate speech or page blanking if it was clear they wouldn't do it again. So why does Edit Warring need to be instantly suspension worthy? I think things would be just fine if we kept the ABA rule but didn't immediately resort to bans unless it was clear that the troper(s) involved weren't listening to reason — the exact same way we handle almost everything else on the wiki.

In my experience, the stress and fear doesn't come so much from the general fear of being in an Edit War, but the knowledge that Edit Wars = Suspensions. If that wasn't true, then people who accidentally break the rule can be sent to ATT to talk things out, instead of needing to have a chat with the mods that may last weeks depending on how fast replies get sent out.

Besides, there's already apparently a type of edit war that doesn't lead to suspensions, and it's the ABC thing alluded to earlier. It was established that an ABC revert chain is an edit war, but one where people won't get suspended, and that's only because no-one did it twice.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 25th 2023 at 3:09:06 PM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I feel this would be so much better if instead of an outright ban we get a mod message to sort it out.

"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."

Or just an user message.

Back in my day, we had some success with tropers who came across an edit war moving the entire contested entry to discussion and telling people to hash it out there, in an informative edit reason.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I've always had mixed feelings on the "Suspension as warning message" policy, but if I'm honest, I think it would be a lot better if it was held off until one or both parties refuse to talk things out.

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Personal thoughts:

• Make an "edit war" notifier for now, at least tropers won't be wondering why the sudden suspension and would show the correct procedure right away.
• Don't treat edit war reports as "all as one" cases. Like in court, assume a revert is accidental until it's clear otherwise. If someone re-commits their edit with argumentative edit reason, yeah that's not in good faith. But we did have cases where a troper looked up their example next day, found it missing, didn't consider checking if it was removed and just added it again. These have different weight.
• Reconsider Ask The Tropers culture for reporting to be for "when everything else fails". Or consider if renaming or splitting it for user reports may be warranted. There were talks about it here and here, but we should make clear that unless there's blatant vandalism or agenda, troper who's violating the rules should be contacted first and report to be made if there's no satisfactory response.
• Rewise Edit War page. Aside if we change anything else with it, maybe "A-B-A" logic isn't clear. It needs to spell out that we're looking for tropers who re-commit their edits in bad faith and provide multiple variations of patterns to look for.

Edited by Amonimus on Dec 25th 2023 at 3:28:41 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

I feel like an edit war notifier would be a good idea. Like for grammar or indexing etc. Where meant to Send notifiers and only report if those get ignored.

"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."

She/Her | Currently cleaning N/A

In a perfect world, possibly an Edit War notifier that also actively notifies the mods in the same way that a Holler does.

Then the staff can take a look and go from there.

Although one advantage of the current system is that tropers tend to map out exactly what's happened before the mods get involved, which makes it much easier to handle.

Unlike other notifiers, where it's all in one edit, an edit war is relevant to at least three.

No, these reports would be inherently premature. The issue is that the definition of edit warring is too broad, not too narrow.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I like the idea of sending an edit war notifier before suspending (and I don't think a mod needs to be the one to send it; none of our existing notifiers work like that), and saving suspensions for when notifiers are ignored (as with our other notifiers).

As for what the text of the notifier would be, I can't think of how to word it, but obviously the policy page itself would also need to be adjusted.

Edit: Well, I suppose what we could do if we make a notifier is change the way we handle ABA cycles from issuing no-questions-asked suspensions to sending a notifier after the third edit. As for whether we'd suspend if the edit war the notifier is sent for is ignored, or if we'd hold off on suspending until/unless notifiers accumulate (again, as with other notifiers), I wasn't sure what was being proposed regarding how we would judge when to suspend with the proposed notifier (particularly regarding how strict or lenient we'd be).

Another edit: I think what miraculous said regarding sending notifiers first and only reporting them if they're ignored would be fine.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Dec 26th 2023 at 10:46:01 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I'd think that, after getting a notifier, continuing to reinstate the same edit without discussion would be an immediate suspension on "clearly not listening" grounds. Repeating the pattern on other edits, while also bad, could wait for a few more reminders to see if the point gets across first.

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eta notification text draft (probably needs improvement but it's a start):

Edited by wingedcatgirl on Dec 27th 2023 at 9:51:36 AM

Trouble Cube continues to be a general-purpose forum for those who desire such a thing.

I'd replace "are most constructively handled" with "are to be handled" because discussion in this case is not optional.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

i like the idea of pinging people to ATT when you make an edit war report. (unless theres some reason to think theyd be aggressive, like bigotry or angry edit reasons or something). It seems like a good way to give them a chance to see what the issue is— and if its a first offense and they respond in the thread and say they will stop, then there's no need to also suspend them

Right. I suppose a notifier could work but it seems less efficient than just starting a discussion and inviting them.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

the other issue with a notifier in lieu of a report, is that it may not actually stop them (see how many people rack up dozens of notifiers without ever responding), or it requires the third party to come back later and check to see if they actually stopped. If an ATT report doesnt automatically result in an immediate suspension, then its a good way to get a public record, call people ro discussion, but also make the situation visible to the mods in case it continues.

Edited by Tremmor19 on Dec 28th 2023 at 10:48:59 AM

The problem I see is that Ask The Tropers is a moderation venue. I'd rather tell people to take their disputes to the discussion page, and only if that fails go to ATT.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I think an issue is when something is taken for discussion. It's rare to get more oopinons. Hence why people use att

"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."

That's more of a question what Ask The Tropers is for, which is own topic.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup