Wipipedia.org:Edit wars

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Two main usages of the term edit war have emerged within Wipipedia. Some people consider that an edit war is when two or more contributors repeatedly revert one another's edits to an article. Others subscribe to a much broader definition, encompassing any situation in which two or more authors repeatedly edit an article extensively. Subscribers to the second definition consider the first definition to be a revert duel, a special case of an edit war. This second usage is harder to identify clearly, and individuals sometimes disagree on whether a particular editing episode constitutes edit warfare.

Edit wars may have many motivations. Such motivations may include, but are not limited to: politics, beliefs, way too much time on your hands, and simple dislike of a user.

Regardless of whether or not the activity should properly be called an "edit war," most users consider sustained episodes of animated cut-and-thrust editing to be undesirable, and if they observe it happening and cannot talk the parties out of it or encourage them to enter the dispute resolution process, they may request protection of the article to enforce a cool down period. Users who persist in this behaviour may be subject to, in severe cases, arbitration.

"Reversion wars" between two competing individuals are against Wipipedia's spirit, reflect badly on both participants, and often result in blocks being implemented due to violations of the three revert rule. Instead of performing a straight revert, look for ways to compromise, or alternative ways of saying the same thing—while such edits take more time and thought than another unthinking revert, they are far more likely to result in a mutually satisfactory article. In the case of newcomers who are genuinely making poor edits, being reverted by two or more people demonstrates that the reversions are not a one man crusade, but something closer to a consensus.

High-frequency reversion wars make the version history less useful, make it hard for other people to contribute, and flood recent changes and watchlists. Low-frequency reversion wars do not cause the community as many problems, though they still cause some. Experience has shown that waiting an hour or more between reverts to vandalism makes continued vandalism less likely. In most cases the troublemaker will lose interest and leave.

Many users recommend spacing out your reversions to one per day. Benefits are:

  • The other person might see the light of reason.
  • You might realize that the other person was right!
  • Others can easily step in and try to help. See, for example, MeatBall:DefendEachOther
  • A day is much easier to apply than "any 24-hour period." By limiting yourself to one revert per day, you avoid the risk of accidently reverting four times in a 24-hour period.

Resolving

If an article you are interested in is the subject of an edit war, you can help sort it out by:

  • Breaking the article into quite small pieces with headings and subheadings. This can help people decide more precisely where they feel text is incorrect.
  • Introducing alternate views. Phrases like "some people believe that...", "in some quarters it is thought that...", "an alternate way of looking at it is..." can help more than one belief pattern to be introduced to an uniformed reader. Note that the nature of an encyclopedia is that the content should be weighted according to the views most widely held, while not ignoring the professional views if different.
  • Merging text to include more than one possibility. E.g. "A widget is a small-to-medium sized thing or whatsit that is either material or fictional."

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