UESPWiki:Archive/CP DrPhoton's misuse of his privileges

DrPhoton's misuse of his privileges

I am extremely dissatisfied with the recent misconduct of the user DrPhoton. I challenged his edit on  and called for a consensus decision. DrPhoton responded in a completely inapproriate way: he reverted my edit. Doing so, he set me on the same line with vandals.

First of all, I cannot begin to emphasize enough, how inappropriate reverting my edit was in a case of an editorial dispute. First, because it is not the proper method of developing pages and second, because the case simply did not warrant a revert. My edit was an editorial decision, not vandalism that should have been reverted.

This can only be described as a gross misuse of administrative privileges of DrPhoton, to use his ability to revert, as a tool to force his view. I did learn something myself - I should check the page history before making an edit that contradicts a previous one and I will try to keep this in mind for the future.

However, the fact that I made an edit that in practice restored the page as it was before, can not be interpreted to allow such measures as taken by DrPhoton. Reverting edits that are not vandalism to restore your edit after another editor has disagreed with you is nothing but asking for an edit war.

The only reason which causes it to be avoided is that I'm not that childish. I cannot understand why DrPhoton refused to wait for the issue to be resolved before taking further action. Moreover, the action that he took was completely out of order and without any kind of basis as DrPhoton was unable to back his story.

He refered me to a generic conversation and went on to say "I consequently removed the links of the cities not having any miscellaneous quests left that start there", which was his personal decision only and in no form previously discussed by the community. This also did not give a response to my reasons of disputing the edit.

My arguments are: 1. Balmora is one of the most prominent cities in the game and for that reason alone its lacking is weird. 2. I don't think I'm so different from normal people that they aren't going to have the same reaction arriving to that page when I did: "where on Earth is Balmora". 3. There is absolutety no reason given for the fact that it's simply missing.

I don't want this to turn into another Aristeo vs. Wrye, from which I stayed well clear of - it can't since the opposite party is an Administrator, and I'm just an editor. This setup makes it even more inappropriate for DrPhoton to misuse his administravite privileges against me in what should have been a purely editorial dispute. Furthermore, the matter should have been discussed before ANY action, as I proposed.

DrPhoton isn't listed as an Administrator, but yet shomehow he has the power to revert edits. A power he blatantly misused to his advantage in an editorial dispute. His behavior was so unprofessional and unsportsmanlike, any special privileges DrPhoton has, but have for some reason been hidden from the community, must be removed, because he cannot be trusted with them.

I would like to ask the opinions of other editors and administrators on this matter. The initial dispute now pales in comparison as the improper way in which DrPhoton handled the case now has tenfold meaning. The whole issue could have been solved easily if it wasn't for the offensive reverting done by him.

There needs to be made a definitive decision whether an administrative tool is allowed to be used by those trusted to have access, to push their personal editorial views. This is the first known case where my edits have been outright reverted and I am taking it as a personal insult. I will be expecting an apology. --FMan | Talk (contribs) 08:04, 11 March 2007 (EDT)

:ok, first i think you should take a deep breath and calm down. Secondly It makes no sense to take away DrPhotons secret Admin powers to revert, as every editor has them, its not a big deal or secret society of reverters type thing. Third, you don't actually provide any links to anything in your text, so I am having a lot of difficulty following what the problem is. Finally please do not take insult at this, in no way are you being labeled a vandal. Jadrax 08:43, 11 March 2007 (EDT)

:This issue is sort of more hyped that it should be. Balmora, Dagon Fel, and Gnaar Mok do not have any quests starting in the city itself, they all have related quests only or quests that belong to another faction (i.e.: mage's guild). The Cities and Towns section of the page is for miscellaneous quests starting in those cities, quests that are related to those cities go on the  page. Also, any editor can revert an edit (all you do is go to history and edit a non-current entry), and reverting is not a vandal-only action. Reverting is just a multi-action tool that is easier than re-editing a page to remove all its unnecessary changes. The changes were not needed (as explained above), and they were dealt with in one quick edit (the revert) that fixed all of it. I don't know if you had already talked with DrPhoton about the edit other than just posting on his talk page that his edits were "disgusting," so you may have wanted to just ask him why he made that edit. --Werdnanoslen  10:44, 11 March 2007 (EDT)

::It's going to take me a bit more time to fully understand what this is about.  But first I want to clearly state that DrPhoton has no administrative privileges.  He did not use any administrative tools or other special powers here, because he doesn't have any.  The only "special" privileges DrPhoton has are those of a patroller, but being a patroller does not give an editor any special editing powers; all that being a patroller provides is the power to see red exclamation points next to edits and remove those exclamation points.  So most of FMan's complaints seem to be based on a significant misunderstanding and can't be addressed.  For example, a "definitive decision whether an administrative tool is allowed to be used" can't be done because there was no use of an administrative tool in this case. --Nephele 12:36, 11 March 2007 (EDT)

:Oh boy, this seems to be a huge misunderstanding. I don't see any misuse of editor powers by DrPhoton. All I see is a simple editor revert, with an explanation attached to it. I don't really think a clear consensus has been established over whether or not there should be links to the Balmora page, but once again, DrPhoton has done nothing wrong. There was no 'edit war'. I hope we can lay this all to rest --Ratwar 14:04, 11 March 2007 (EDT)

::Looking over what happened, I don't see that DrPhoton did anything here that is different from what FMan himself did.  According to , neither FMan's edit nor DrPhoton's edit probably should have been done (although this is the one paragraph of that page that still needs more work, see , so what is truly appropriate is somewhat murky).  Both in essence just reverted the page to a previous version; probably neither one should have modified the page if they felt that they issue needed to be discussed in order to be resolved.  
::The most important principle however is Assume Good Faith.  Although perhaps reverting the edit was not the best judgement call, I see no reason to think that DrPhoton made his edit in bad faith or that he somehow meant to sabotage the consensus process.  I definitely don't see that anything in DrPhoton's actions suggests that he considered FMan's edit to be "vandalism".  He provided an edit summary with a good explanation of why he made the change ("reverted last edit by FMan: Balmora, Dagon Fel and Gnaar Mok don't have any miscellaenous quest starting there"), and contributed to the discussion started by FMan on the talk page with a more detailed explanation.  And just to re-emphasize my previous point: the revert he made was done using standard editor privileges; even an anonymous IP editor could have made the exact same edit.  There is no foundation to the allegation that he somehow misused secret administrative powers.  If these reverts had continued this would have become an edit war, but as it stood, it was just one round of reverts, and there had not been any clear call made to stop making edits until the issue was resolved.
::I also see no reason to believe that this issue would not have been resolved if FMan had continued to contribute to the talk page discussion instead of disrupting the entire process with these allegations.  DrPhoton appeared willing to discuss the edits on the talk page.  If FMan felt that he wanted more general input on the question in order to get a community consensus, he should have simply asked for more people's opinions.  In the early part of a discussion it is far more productive for everyone to simply contribute to the discussion with their opinions (if necessary overlooking any minor errors in judgement), than to jump to conclusions and start making accusations about other people's motives.  Try to remember that everyone shares the same main objective: trying to improve UESPWiki. --Nephele 14:27, 11 March 2007 (EDT)
:::Ditto. --Wrye 15:26, 11 March 2007 (EDT)

:It appears that, upon closer inspection, this has turned out to be a problem of perception, rather than behaviour.  FMan had apparently gained the impression that reversion of an edit carries a much greater implied rebuke than is commonly understood, and felt that his good-faith contribution had been likened to vandalism by DrPhoton.  Furthermore, he was apparently unaware that reversion is merely a term for a specific editing trick that any editor can employ, not a special administration tool, and consequently assumed that DrPhoton A) possessed administrator privileges, and B) had exploited his higher status unfairly to enforce his opinion in a way not open FMan himself.  Given these impressions - erroneous, though understandable - I don't think it was wrong of him in his perceived situation to cry foul publicly.
:Now that the misconceptions have been cleared up, and FMan can be assured of a "level playing field" between himself and DrPhoton, I hope he is willing to discuss the matter further on the relevant talk page, without the need for mediation -- JustTheBast 15:52, 11 March 2007 (EDT)

:I agree with Nephele and JustTheBlast. It's understandable that you are upset, DrPhoton may have acted a little quickly, but he did give a explanation. I think you both should apologize to eachother and put this behind you. --67.142.130.46 17:46, 11 March 2007 (EDT)

FMan, I am sorry you felt you were treated like a vandal, that was certainly not my intention. Please note that reverting is not something solely reserved for vandalism. Also note that the same could have been said about your previous edit. Furthermore, I didn't use any special privileges because I have none apart from those of a patroller, as certified by Nephele above, and I didn't use any special tool, I just edited my previous version of the page, as Werdnanoslen explained. I could indeed have used the Patrol Tool to revert the edit, but in this case I didn't.

Having said this, I think we would have saved all this hassle if you had continued the discussion started in  or if you had come to my talk page with your concerns, rather than accusing me openly of things I haven't done. In any case, I am willing to put this behind and continue our discussion on , inviting anyone else to give their inputs to reach a consensus on the matter before any more edits are made. --DrPhoton 04:48, 12 March 2007 (EDT)
:I no longer wish to contribute to UESP. Good bye! --FMan | Talk (contribs) 13:29, 23 March 2007 (EDT)