Wikipedia talk:Gravedancing

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Pinging Anomalocaris| and Bishonen who suggested the creation of this essay over at WP:NOTGRAVEDANCING. What do you think? I thought a much broader definition was needed than the one in WP:NOTGRAVEDANCING which was pretty much related to only one kind of gravedancing (i.e., editing of the user's userpage) and not to the broader phenomenon. FOARP (talk) 13:46, 22 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Very nice! I think the nutshell is a bit limited, though. The person, not just their work, needs to be treated as respectfully as possible. Remember, we do not insult even the vandals, and we certainly shouldn't insult or humiliate a user who may originally have meant very well, and done good work, even though they eventually flamed out. Do you think you could add something to the nutshell about respecting the human being?


 * The examples of gravedancing/not gravedancing are excellent! Very thoughtful. But the "See also"'s may be a bit too general to be very useful.


 * Thank you for this essay! Bishonen &#124; talk 14:10, 22 January 2019 (UTC).

Call for discussion
Some of those who were indefinitely blocked caused years of damage, prior to being blocked.

The wikipedia became successful by accident. Even those present during its golden age don't fully understand its success.

The fact that tricky malicious vandals get away with years of vandalism, through clever tricks show that our anti-vandalism features are far from perfect.

I find this essay disturbing, because, when long-term vandals finally get their indefinite block is precisely the time when the good faith contriubtors who wised up to them early SHOULD detail their vandalism in detail. This essay could be interpreted as asserting that the good faith listing of the successful vandalism of the departed contributor was "WP:Gravedancing". Geo Swan (talk) 17:43, 12 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi Geo Swan, apologies about the late response. The article does state that "Checking the edits of a user who was blocked for, or who was later discovered to have been engaged in, disruptive editing related to content in article space, and undoing/deleting those that fail to meet Wikipedia policy is not gravedancing, however I am happy to engage with any constructive changes to improve this. WP:BRD is a perfectly valid form of editing. For the avoidance of doubt, I don't think that simply factually describing the acts of a vandal should be considered WP:GRAVEDANCING, but insulting and uncivil behaviour is bad even if it is towards a blocked vandal. FOARP (talk) 15:09, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

WP:BLOCKEVADE and unhelpful edits.
Regarding this, I feel "unhelpful" there is potentially misleading. While it is true that helpful edits from a block-evading user can be left in place, the policy states that Anyone is free to revert any edits made in violation of a block, without giving any further reason and without regard to the three-revert rule. However, this does not mean that edits must be reverted just because they were made by a blocked editor (obviously helpful changes, such as fixing typos or undoing vandalism, can be allowed to stand), but the presumption in ambiguous cases should be to revert - note the "does that edits must be reverted" and the "can", which still allow their deletion until someone vouches for their helpfulness. That is, part of the point of BLOCKEVADE is that it shifts the burden from "must actively assert an edit is unhelpful in order to delete it" (the usual standard) to "can delete every edit an editor has made unless someone, including you, is willing to proactively assert that it is helpful." More generally, the idea is that this is necessary in order to deny block-evading users any benefit from their evasion (otherwise editors blocked for anything other than simple vandalism would be tempted to constantly create new accounts, believing their edits to be "helpful" and hoping that things would stick.) Because of these things, I do not think that any good-faith deletions under WP:BLOCKEVADE can ever be properly called gravedancing  - leaving "unhelpful" there implies that the editor performing the deletions has to actively assert that the edits they're deleting are unhelpful and that they can be accused of gravedancing by people who disagree, which goes against BLOCKEVADE's relatively cautious language and intent when it comes to the circumstances under which a block-evading user's edits can (not must) be retained. --Aquillion (talk) 17:58, 8 June 2021 (UTC)