Wikipedia talk:How to revert a page to an earlier version/Policy vote: Protect or slow down editing

See Also:
 * Policy vote: 24 hour bans for revert wars?
 * Poll: revert wars considered harmful

Policy vote: per article ban or per user page protection for revert wars?
The previous poll ("Revert wars considered harmful") and discussion below indicate that a large majority of the community are in favor of the guideline "do not revert the same page more than three times in the same day".

For the purposes of this proposed policy, since it is more rigid than the current guideline, the rule would be no user may revert 6 or more times the same page in one 24 hour period - these 6 reverts have to be to one page. This rule is not intended to grant an allowance of 5 reverts per user per day per article: reverts should be avoided.

The only exception to this rule will be in cases of clear political conflict; not content disputes, but covering up after a user who goes on a timely campaign of political activism, like the current case of User:Bird and her never-ending list of proxy IPs, sock puppets and allies with which she is circumventing a hard ban. Of course, assaults against User:bird began after Bird reverted pages only once.

Currently, when users engage in a revert war, sysops may decide to protect that page. A temporary page protection is supposed to allow the users to calm down and discuss the problem on the article's talk page. However, this prevents all users from editing the page in question.

This proposal is intended to be less agressive toward the user (as it does not prevent him entirely from editing wikipedia, at least talk pages are available) to avoid the risk of teaming up of a couple of users against another user.

Two options are proposed.
 * 1) Banning one (or more) user from the page during 24 hours;
 * 2) Slowing down the edition process of a page from one specific (or more) user during 24 hours (for example, only one edit for that page for the user)

Arguments in favor

 * More acceptable to the numerous people who expressed themselves in disfavor of the ban
 * Banning or slowing down a user for 24 hours will give them time to calm down and to step back and examine their actions.
 * When one or two users misbehave, the rest of the community is no longer punished by being prevented from editing certain pages and having to follow warring users around, cleaning up after them.
 * Less aggressive toward users

Arguments in opposition

 * Requires tech implementation, but protection of article per user has often been mentioned as potentially very beneficial
 * What about anonymous users? IP addresses can change, particularly with users on dial-up.
 * The definition for user is uncertain. Includes "user" sysops as well? It's a requirement...

Wikipedians in favor

 * 1) FirmLittleFluffyThing
 * 2) James F. (talk) 13:07, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * 3) BCorr ¤ &#1041;&#1088;&#1072;&#1081;&#1077;&#1085;
 * 4) This sounds like the "throttling" idea Jimbo proposed yesterday. --Uncle Ed 14:06, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * 5) Jwrosenzweig 21:45, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * 6) Sean 08:18, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * 7) Fennec 13:42, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC) So long as it doesn't interfere with counter-vandalism efforts.
 * 8) El
 * 9) Hephaestos|&#167; 17:26, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC) (this is long overdue)
 * 10) Angela. This would be very useful.
 * 11) Only if they do it excessively: a couple of articles with very very very questionable edits should not cause someone to be blocked. ugen64 01:33, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC)
 * 12) +sj+  Similarly, per-article protection (for limited stretches of time) from editing by anonymous users could be useful.
 * 13) Bryan 22:33, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * 14) Ryan_Cable 11:36, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * 15) Sam Spade 05:23, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC) Must include sysops!
 * 16) Jamesday 03:11, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * 17) Zigger 02:40, 2004 Jul 3 (UTC) Also allow per-page protection from IP ranges.

Wikipedians opposed to this proposed policy

 * 1) Taku
 * 2) Ruhrjung
 * 3) Wik
 * 4) Anthony DiPierro
 * 5) Lirath Q. Pynnor
 * 6) Nephelin
 * 7) bsoft
 * 8) Stirling Newberry
 * 9) Gene Nygaard 19:18, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Abstentions

 * (none)

Wikipedians in favor

 * 1) FirmLittleFluffyThing
 * 2) Ruhrjung (Aint sure about precise implementation, but slowing down editing seems a good idea)
 * 3) James F. (talk) 13:07, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * 4) BCorr ¤ &#1041;&#1088;&#1072;&#1081;&#1077;&#1085;
 * 5) This sounds like the "throttling" idea Jimbo proposed yesterday. --Uncle Ed 14:06, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * 6) Jwrosenzweig 21:45, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * 7) Sean 08:18, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * 8) Fennec So long as it doesn't mess up counter-vandalism efforts.
 * 9) Angela.
 * 10) Bryan 22:33, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * 11) Sam Spade 05:24, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC) Must include sysops!
 * 12) Jamesday 03:11, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC) though this one won't stop deterined edit warriors it may be a useful initial step or others before going to a ban from an article.
 * 13) Scott Gall 09:21, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC) But how can you slow down editing? How long would it take to edit if it's slowed down?

Wikipedians opposed

 * 1) Taku
 * 2) Wik
 * 3) Anthony DiPierro
 * 4) Lirath Q. Pynnor
 * 5) El
 * 6) Among other things, this won't stop reverters. ugen64 01:34, Mar 13, 2004 (UTC)
 * 7) Nephelin - an ip address is easily changed
 * 8) bsoft
 * 9) Ryan_Cable 11:36, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * 10) Stirling Newberry

Abstentions

 * 1) Hephaestos|&#167; 17:26, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)