User:Ecstatic Electrical/Ask first, revert later

Edit warring is a fairly large problem on Wikipedia. Many users are temporarily blocked or even entire pages are protected due to edit warring. It appears to be common practice that an editing dispute should proceed as follows:


 * Editor A makes a change to an article
 * Editor B disagrees with the change, and reverts it
 * Editor A reverts editor B, and gets blocked for edit warring after multiple times
 * Editor A is expected to start a discussion about the edit that editor B reverted

However, I believe that disputes should work this way instead:


 * Editor A makes a change to an article
 * Editor B disagrees with that change, but leaves it in place
 * Editor B starts a discussion, either with the editor and/or on the article talk page
 * If there is consensus for removing the edit, it can be removed. Otherwise, it can be kept

This strategy, which I like to call Ask first, revert later might (in fact, probably will) reduce the number of edit wars that occur on Wikipedia. If the editor who disagrees with a change starts the discussion, rather than reverting outright and expecting the contributor who initiated the edit to start the discussion, the environment will be much more civil and peaceful.

Some new editors, especially may not understand that not everything can be kept in Wikipedia. Additionally, they may not understand how the revert/undo feature works, therefore mistakenly assuming that all their work has been irreversibly deleted when they are reverted. It is important to educate new users and to try and prevent them from thinking like this. When editors have these thoughts, it only increases the chances that they won’t stay on Wikipedia — and we need contributors!

In summary, by discussing an edit before reverting it, the chances of a content dispute and an edit war should be lower. This is always a good thing. After all, nobody wants to have users blocked or pages protected, since Wikipedia is the “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”.