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24 hour rule applies when texting, Skype, and email, you have a 24 hour window to respond.
On Wikipedia, one should assume innocent intentions in wrongdoing before assuming malice. As a way of encouraging this, editors should wait until 24 hours after an ambiguous action has occurred before either assuming motive, or, depending on the situation, taking action themselves. This allows ample time for others to react, spark discussion, and avoid edit and/or wheel warring.
Ambiguous situations only
editThis rule is mainly only meant to cover ambiguous situations— that is, situations in which it's not clear just what, exactly, is going on and/or why. If someone is clearly vandalizing, or motive is apparent to most reasonable people, for example, then the situation is probably not ambiguous. Moreover, in emergency situations (see below), sometimes immediate action is needed despite the situation's ambiguity.
What constitutes an emergency
editObviously some things will be classified as an emergency when they might not be. However, a general rule of thumb on Wikipedia is that emergencies are usually recognized as an action or series of actions that can cause damage that is significant, irreparable, or otherwise difficult/painstaking/resource-consumptive to fix. In these cases, however, there is usually little, if any, ambiguity in the apparent motivations of the performer and it would therefore be significantly more difficult to divine plausible scenarios to account for such actions.
Rationale
editWhen something scary and new arises, it's human nature to set aside dealing with the mundane and give disproportionately greater weight to dealing with novelty.[1] As a result, there are frequently calls to immediately attempt to deal with it in the quickest way possible, even if taking immediate action isn't the best thing to do. Therefore, unless there is truly an emergency, keep a calm head and think things through slowly.
Footnotes
edit- ^ There are a few cool topics on this if you're interested: cognitive dissonance, neglect of probability, status quo bias, system justification, and zero-risk bias to name a few that seem to arise in situations pertaining to the normal operations of Wikipedia.