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RFC: Should the following exemption be added to the edit warring policy[edit]
Should the following proposed insertion to the list of exemptions to the edit warring policy be added? Exemption #9: Reverting edits that have been specified as not edit-warring by a policy or applicable Arbitration Committee ruling.⇒SWATJesterShoot Blues, Tell VileRat! 16:10, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
See initial discussion above. Again, I believe this change should be uncontroversial, as it's literally just codifying as an exemption things that have already explicitly been declared "not edit-warring" by either policy, or ArbCom, so it does not actually constitute any substantive change in policy. As a reminder, the existing policy already states that: "Reverting to enforce certain overriding policies is not considered edit warring" in the inline text -- it just doesn't actually list this in the enumerated exemptions; this change would harmonize that. ⇒SWATJesterShoot Blues, Tell VileRat! 16:10, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is there somesort of context ....this is meaningless without a link or example. Moxy🍁 16:27, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, so for instance: If the topic is under the ArbCom extended-confirmed restriction or the community's similar version, there's a line saying "Reverts made solely to enforce this restriction are not considered edit warring." Part of CONTOP also says "Edits that breach an editor or page restriction may be reverted." -- In both of those scenarios we have a clear-cut, unambiguous statement that "X is not edit warring." However, that exemption that "X is not edit warring" does not appear in the obvious place to look, the list of exemptions to the edit-warring policy. This creates a risk of confusion and ambiguity in the edit-warring policy. Instead of individually hunting down and adding every single one of those exemptions directly (which would presumably never succeed), the idea is to simply have a single exemption that would take whatever the other policy/ruling has already said is OK, and give it a home under the enumerated list of exemptions. ⇒SWATJesterShoot Blues, Tell VileRat! 16:48, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can you give an example of an edit that is deemed "not edit-warring by a policy"?--Bbb23 (talk) 16:54, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The example I'd give is actually this article page, WP:EW. At the top of the page, it indicates that "Reverting to enforce certain overriding policies is not considered edit warring." It then gives an example of the BLP policy (which does have an enumerated exemption, #7) as one of those policies, explicitly based on the fact that the removal is *required* ... where negative unsourced content is being introduced, the risk of harm is such that removal is required. There are other policies that also outline scenarios where the risk of harm is such that removal is required; however unlike BLP they do not have an explicitly enumerated exemption to the edit warring policy. One of those is Wikipedia:Harassment, which outlines scenarios where an edit *must* be immediately reverted. Any edit that "outs" someone must be reverted promptly, followed by a request for oversight to delete that edit from Wikipedia. Any administrator may redact it pending oversight, even when the administrator is involved. However reverting outing, unlike BLP, is *not* currently an explicitly enumerated exemption to the EW policy, creating a scenario in which -- according to policy -- an editor *must* do a revert while it is still ambiguous as to whether they'd get in trouble for enforcing it repeatedly. Now, a long-time user or admin might look at that scenario and scoff and say "Of course, we can revert that as many times as necessary and we'd just block the out-er" which is true; however a newer, non-admin user wouldn't necessarily know that. I will admit there are fewer examples that I can think of on the policy side than the ArbCom ruling side though. To my mind, it just wouldn't make much sense to apply this to ArbCom rulings and then *not* apply it to policy as well. But if that's a sticking point, I'm not opposed to limiting the scope further. ⇒SWATJesterShoot Blues, Tell VileRat! 17:18, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is sensible, as long as people behave and don't use it to game the system, which is, as always, a risky but somewhat necessary assumption. But I would prefer to just list exemptions to edit warring restriction on the edit warring page, provided the list doesn't get too long. --Licks-rocks (talk) 19:23, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It of course would be more direct to have every exemption listed here, but I fear that would create two problems. First, as you noted, the list may get too long, which is subjective and I suspect there's not going to be agreement about what constitutes "too long" -- some might think that the list is too long already, others might draw the line at double digits? 20 exemptions? Secondly, it'd be likely that each exemption would require an additional RFC to add to this page's list, on top of whatever was necessary to get it instituted on the other policy in the first case (which is presumably either an ArbCom case or an RFC for a policy). The clean part about this proposal is that it bypasses that secondary level of bureaucracy where it's unlikely to be seriously controversial. It also would be easier to maintain if the underlying policy or ruling were to be reversed in the future -- in such a case we would inherently not need to do anything to remove the exemption either. ⇒SWATJesterShoot Blues, Tell VileRat! 19:38, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would prefer to add something along the lines of "Reverts made solely to enforce edit-confirmed restrictions, topic bans, or similar editing restrictions" and avoid mentioning ArbCom. Making policies directly dependent on ArbCom decisions makes me a bit leery because they're not supposed to be setting policy - I think it's fine for us to say "yes the community approves of this" but ultimately it's the community and not ArbCom that decides what edit-warring is. And beyond that, saying "policy or arbcom ruling" is vague because people reading this page won't know what those exceptions are - it's better to just add the specific exceptions themselves here rather than vaguely waving our hand and implying that someone should read every single policy and every single ArbCom ruling to find out. --Aquillion (talk) 18:27, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No The clearest rule regarding edit warring would be don't do it. Compelling reasons for a new exception would have to be provided, with examples, before starting an RfC. The exceptions list needs to be simple and should not imply that a thousand Arbitration cases can be trawled to look for reasons to edit war. Johnuniq (talk) 05:00, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but remove "by a policy" since this is the edit-warring policy. I don't think trawling is an issue, since the cases where ArbCom has explicitly allowed reverts are very few since the various contentious topics were brought uniformly under the WP:ARBECR umbrella. (In fact, are there any others?) This is not a "new exception", Johnuniq, but an existing exception that can be mentioned to avoid a contradiction. Zerotalk 11:45, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No ((Summoned by bot)): I don't see the need and agree with user:Johnuniq: don't do it. See comments below. -- Otr500 (talk)
No per Johnuniq. I particularly oppose the "by a policy" exemption, but I think the ArbCom exemption is unnecessary and the list of exemptions is already too long. I also don't think it's a good idea to combine two exemptions in one - it's confusing.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:38, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is not that I find the addition controversial. I fail to see the significance or need to "harmonize" using a stipulated enumeration as a possible unnecessary "preemption". The community accepted "explanatory essay", WP:BRD augments a policy (Wikipedia:Consensus) and an editing guideline (WP:BOLD). It seems it would be far better to stop edit warring before it gets to three strikes.
There is the added "strong encouragement" concerning possible policy edit warring, Editors of policy and guideline pages are strongly encouraged to follow 1RR or 0RR]. A need for another example should be considered for this policy only when there is actually a need so we do not get into needlessly making "rules". Edit warring is WP:Disruptive editing and an editor can be found to violate the explanatory essay Wikipedia:NOTHERE: The expression "here to build an encyclopedia" is a long-standing rule used to distinguish constructive and non-constructive users and pages.
It would seem the last paragraph in the "Exemptions" section If you are claiming an exemption, make sure there is a clearly visible edit summary or separate section of the talk page that explains the exemption. When in doubt, do not revert. Instead, follow the guidance below in § Handling of edit-warring behaviors, would be better served being at the top of the section. -- Otr500 (talk) 05:28, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Except in this case, the things are definitionally not edit warring; and without harmonizing the exemption, it can be ambiguous whether "when in doubt, do not revert" applies. What you're describing is in fact a scenario where this exemption would help, by removing doubt. ⇒SWATJesterShoot Blues, Tell VileRat! 05:41, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to me some tidying up would be beneficial to Wikipedia, lessen confusion, and minimise instruction creep
Has anyone really read What edit warring is lately? The opening paragraph discusses BOLD, BRD, and in the mist one sentence: An edit war only arises if the situation develops into a series of back-and-forth reverts. This is followed by "Nevertheless, not every revert or controversial edit is regarded as edit warring:" - and a bulleted list of basically What is NOT edit warring. It may be just me but I prefer numbered listings over bulleted listings. A certain number used in a conversation certainly lessons any possible confusion.
(#1): The first example begins: "Reverting vandalism is not edit warring". This is covered in the "Exemptions" section (#4) below.
(#2): The second example: Reverting to enforce certain overriding policies is not considered edit warring. For example, under the policy on biographies of living persons, where negative unsourced content is being introduced, the risk of harm is such that removal is required seems to me to be close to what Swatjester suggested to be added (#9), with the exception "or applicable Arbitration Committee ruling", that Aquillion stated should be omitted. Considering the redundancy of the other examples it would likely not be controversial to remove content from a section it doesn't belong in and add to the "Exemptions" section, minus the BLP (already listed in #7) and Arbcom mention.
(#3): "Reverting edits of banned or blocked users is not edit warring." is covered in #3 of the "Exceptions".
(#4): "Reverting edits in one's own user page is rarely edit warring", and the rest of that could be merged to #1 and combined with #2 in the "Exemptions" because "Reverting edits to pages in your own user space" is "self-reverting".
Corrections would not only reduce redundancy there would still be only eight examples in the "Exemptions" section. If #1 and #2 were combined, along with the unnecessary and largely redundant examples of "what editing warring is not" in the "What edit warring is" section would certainly amount to reducing instruction creep.
Unless I am wrong such reorganizing would likely not be as subjected to needing broad community consensus but just those involved since I don't see it makes any real changes. Of course, if this is deemed worthy of discussion and possible implementing it is under a subsection of an ongoing RFC for the "Edit warring" policy. -- Otr500 (talk) 18:39, 17 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My suspicion is that regardless of whether there's any actual changes, people will object just to the re-organizing despite what WP:PGCHANGE and WP:PGBOLD say about how this process should work.⇒SWATJesterShoot Blues, Tell VileRat! 02:15, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
