Wikipedia talk:Wheel war/Proposal 1

message: In the spirit of the 1RR, no sysop action may be reverted more than once in any given dispute without sufficient discussion.
*Suppose Admin A decides to protect a page. Admin B disagrees with this decision and chooses to unprotect. Admin A accepts Admin B's reasoning. In this case, no violation has taken place.
*Suppose instead that when Admin B chooses to unprotect, Admin A reprotects (thus reverting Admin B's unprotection). Admins A and B discuss the situation and come to agreement. No violation has taken place.
*Suppose instead than when Admin A chooses to reprotect, Admin B unprotects again, and Admin A reprotects again. At this the situation has degenerated into a wheel war and both Admin A and B would be in violation of this policy.
*If, in the midst of this wheel war, Admin C comes along and unprotects after Admin A, Admin C is also in violation of this policy. Unlike the Three-revert rule, the wheel-warring policy is applied "per side" or "per issue", not per user. Similarly, the time limit is not 24 hours, but rather however long it takes to settle the dispute and achieve Consensus—or, failing that, decide the issue via standard Wikipedia processes.
Edit wars over protected pages, while arguably wheel warring, fall under the policies regarding edit warring instead of this policy. Edit warring by admins, however, is in particularly poor form—the position of trust that admins hold requires them to be held to a high standard of conduct.
Violations of this policy are to be posted to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. Any administrator who violates this policy will have their administrator privileges stripped by the stewards pending further review, with obvious exceptions in the case of simple vandalism by a "rogue admin".
====Statement by Philwelch regarding proposal====
Just as the Three revert rule puts an end to edit warring, not by a vague ban on "edit warring" but rather by an objective limit, my proposed wheel-warring policy places objective limits on reversions of admin actions. Vague, unclear policies only lead to rules lawyering. Wheel warring admins try to say "I wasn't wheel warring!". Maybe not, but if they broke the 1RR on admin action, that's another thing entirely. — Phil Welch 00:57, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Philwelch's proposal

message: Just as the Three revert rule puts an end to edit warring, not by a vague ban on "edit warring" but rather by an objective limit, my proposed wheel-warring policy places objective limits on reversions of admin actions. Vague, unclear policies only lead to rules lawyering. Wheel warring admins try to say "I wasn't wheel warring!". Maybe not, but if they broke the 1RR on admin action, that's another thing entirely. — Phil Welch 00:57, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Statement by Philwelch regarding proposal

message: This is a straw poll to see which proposals have high levels of support. The straw poll begins 00:57, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Straw poll

message: ====Support (1)====
# Support my own proposal, of course. — Phil Welch 00:59, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Philwelch's proposal (1)

message: # Support my own proposal, of course. — Phil Welch 00:59, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Support (1)

message: # Oppose I'm not a big fan of the bit about "Admin C". This should be per-user, otherwise the admin who takes action first is protected from having their action undone by anyone. —Locke Cole • t • c 01:19, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Oppose (1)

message: ====Support (2)====
#Weak support, doesn't contain anything I object to.  JYolkowski // talk 01:36, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Carnildo's proposal (2)

message: #Weak support, doesn't contain anything I object to.  JYolkowski // talk 01:36, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Support (2)

message: #Oppose -- viz "repeatedly"; cf can i do it until i need glasses; sorry John Reid 05:05, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Oppose (2)

message: ====Support (3)====
# I support my idea. It has the advantage of flexibilty. It states no predefined punishments but allows the AC to decide the best course of action. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 01:09, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Theresa's proposal (3)

message: # I support my idea. It has the advantage of flexibilty. It states no predefined punishments but allows the AC to decide the best course of action. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 01:09, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Support (3)

message: #Oppose -- Too vague, too harsh; sorry John Reid 05:05, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Oppose (3)

message: *This pretty much restates how things are now. I do think we should bave a 1RR-style wheel war (let's call it 1WW) policy though, but not as Phil Welch has defined it. A 1WW policy would discourage admins from engaging in repeated wheel war actions, but not allow a single admin to effectively hold the action they performed hostage (as Phil Welch's proposal seems to allow). —Locke Cole • t • c 01:26, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment (3)

message: ====Support (4)====
# Support -- Clear, unambiguous, simple, short. Doesn't address so-called tag-team ww; but are these the most common problems? If (say) 4 big-endian admins protect Boiled eggs and 5 little-endian admins unprotect, then we've run out of endians and the war is over, so long as none of the 9 re-enter the process. Penalties are deliberately not specified; violations should never be common enough to demand rubber-stamp justice. Let the punishment fit the crime. John Reid 05:05, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  John Reid's proposal (4) 

message: # Support -- Clear, unambiguous, simple, short. Doesn't address so-called tag-team ww; but are these the most common problems? If (say) 4 big-endian admins protect Boiled eggs and 5 little-endian admins unprotect, then we've run out of endians and the war is over, so long as none of the 9 re-enter the process. Penalties are deliberately not specified; violations should never be common enough to demand rubber-stamp justice. Let the punishment fit the crime. John Reid 05:05, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Support (4)

message: #Oppose. Bad idea. Too inflexible. --06:18, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Oppose (4)

message: #  JYolkowski writes: In some rare cases, undoing another administrator's actions repeatedly is the only way for me to protect innocent users. This may indicate a basic difference in our understanding of how collaborative editing works. My theory is that there is nothing that I must do twice, even as a plain editor. Indeed, there is nothing I must do once. I feel compelled to respond on talk to questions directed to me; I may undo things I've done wrong; and of course I try to shoulder my fair share of the burden as and when I see it. But I must believe that the wiki will roll on with or without me. Were I an admin I would hold to the same view regarding admin actions -- no matter how strongly I feel that something must be done, if nobody else feels the same way, then I'm probably wrong. So, it's enough that I do any given thing once -- and if it is undone by another, then perhaps a third party will redo it. Certainly some editors -- and some admins -- do destructive things and we all have a responsibility to oppose this. But I cannot take the entire burden of policing even one word on one page; and I think it would be a dangerous attitude for me to cast myself in the role of the Lone Ranger. John Reid
# Ok, I may be over-rhetoricking this, but can we call it something besides 1WW?  I feel as though this says "you may wheel-war, but only a little bit."  So as to be in line with 1RR and 3RR, can we call this 1 Admin Revert, or 1AR?  Picky, perhaps, but if our goal is to eliminate wheel-warring, we shouldn't enshrine its use in the language we choose to use. JDoorjam     Talk 13:06, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment (4)

message: ====Support (5)====
#Support as author. —Locke Cole • t • c 09:12, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Locke Cole's proposal (5) 

message: #Support as author. —Locke Cole • t • c 09:12, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Support (5)

message: #Oppose, no right to undo another administrator's actions should exist. It might be appropriate or necessary to do so, but that should be a rare action that has to be justified.  Fred Bauder 13:28, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Oppose (5)

message: # This one reads to my eye like a more verbose version of my proposal, so far as the standard of conduct is concerned; and resembles TK's in the penalty section. I think we're gravitating toward some sort of consensus: 1WW. John Reid 08:30, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment (5)

message: ====Support (6)====
# Of course.  See talk page.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:37, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kelly Martin's proposal (6) 

message: # Of course.  See talk page.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:37, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Support (6)

message: #Oppose. Again, this has the problem of allowing the admin who starts the wheel war to be decisive, if only two admins are involved. Admin 1 blocks, admin 2 unblocks. Admin 1 can't reblock and if no one else gets involved, admin 2 got his or her own way by being the aggressor. 0RR should mean precisely what it says. Do not undo another admin's actions, unless the situation is urgent or the circumstances exceptional.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SlimVirgin (talk • contribs) 20:47, 13 April 2006  (UTC)
#*The "only two admins" scenario seems like a red herring to me.  It's not as if we didn't have WP:ANI, and user talk pages, and e-mail, and even (shudder) IRC.  You can always find another admin.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:41, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Oppose (6)

message: *I don't see how this would prevent the slow-simmering wheel wars - i.e. usual wheel wars are admins reversing each other every half hour or so - this seems to merely make it every 24 hours. Isn't the purpose of this to prevent wheel wars altogether? Just another star in the night T | @ | C 20:30, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment (6)

message: ====Support (7)==== 
#In light of recent events, it's clear to me that a MUCH FIRMER policy against reverting is necessary. Kelly Martin (talk) 21:20, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kelly Martin's second proposal (7) 

message: #In light of recent events, it's clear to me that a MUCH FIRMER policy against reverting is necessary. Kelly Martin (talk) 21:20, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Support (7)

message: # Pending an explanation of the need for such a draconian policy, my initial reaction is to oppose this as overly strict.  While discussing a contested matter with me would be a courtesy, if I do make a mistake, I would not want it to go uncorrected just because I'm not on Wikipedia for a few days.  If strictly interpreted (which the wording certainly seems to imply that we should do), this would also make some of our established practices illegal.  For example, it would no longer be allowable to simply undelete and list a contested speedy-deletion or to unblock an anon IP when the block is having unintended consequences on signed-in users.  Rossami (talk) 22:28, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Oppose (7)

message: *Define "discuss with the other sysop"; do you mean literally leave a message on the talk page and wait for a response, etc.? Or do you mean simply leaving a message indicating why you're reversing their action (and then being able to reverse the action; but still discussing if the other sysop responds)? In principle, I agree with it; many sysops have ignored WP:BLOCKs clause regarding undoing other sysop' blocks; specifically:
* And really, it's only become more common place to undo another sysops action without discussing it with them directly (which needs to stop, IMHO). But I agree with  that it seems rather draconian. A temporary desysopping until the Arbitration Committee has had a chance to consider/review the situation would be more appropriate. If you make this change, I'll support. —Locke Cole • t • c 11:04, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment (7)

message: ----
Please see talk. John Reid 04:42, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Refactor