Wikipedia talk:Edit warring/Archives/2023/August

Latest comment: 1 year ago by Valereee in topic Contentious topic areas


Edit-warring and p-blocks from the article

The page says Administrators decide whether to issue a warning or block; these are intended to prevent, deter, and encourage change in disruptive behavior, not to punish it. Where a block is appropriate, 24 hours is common for a first offense; administrators tend to issue longer blocks for repeated or aggravated violations, and will consider other factors, such as civility and previous blocks and in general admins usually do a full time-limited block with increasing durations. At WP:Blocking policy (WP:BLOCKDURATION) this is explained as Longer blocks for repeated and high levels of disruption are to reduce administrative burden; they are made under the presumption that such users are likely to cause frequent disruption or harm in future.

I'm wondering if, now that we have p-blocks available, for edit-warring in particular, this becomes punitive. The edit-warring editor doesn't need to be blocked from everywhere to prevent further disruption. They could just be indef p-blocked from the article. That would both stop the ongoing current disruption but also allow/require them to appeal with discussion instead of just waiting out a timed block. The p-block would be in the record for any admin to look at and say, on a future repeated edit-war, "You promised you'd avoid doing this again, and here we are." But it would also allow the editor to continue to do whatever they generally are doing that isn't disruptive. Valereee (talk) 16:29, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

I would like to see the page suggest p-blocks as a first sanction. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 18:04, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Contentious topic areas

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.



Hi Valereee, and anyone else interested. I saw you added the following to the §Administrator guidance section:

The concept of involvement has evolved over time to include topic areas in which the admin is a frequent content editor; caution should be used especially in contentious topic areas where the admin is a frequent content editor.

Was this something discussed elsewhere? Does it bring the page in alignment with other bits of admin guidance on involvement? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 18:08, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
@Firefangledfeathers, it was a recent RfA. I guess that means it wasn't yours lol... Valereee (talk) 19:46, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
We did talk about it at my RfA, but I wouldn't have thought that consensus developed there that "the concept of involvement has evolved over time" in that particular direction. I'm happy to be talking about it, but I'm not sure that addition has enough consensus behind it to warrant inclusion in policy (unless there are more discussions I don't know about). Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:51, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
Oh, it was yours! Lol! I'm happy to discuss, but if that's something many people are feeling -- and it was mentioned by multiple people in the RfA -- I feel like we should at least warn people. Maybe "arguably includes" ? Valereee (talk) 19:57, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
Would you consider removing the content for now and bringing this discussion to WT:ADMIN (the main page for the policy that discusses involvement). Since INVOVLED affects every potential admin action, it would be odd to have such a warning here and not there, or anywhere else where admin guidance is given. I'm also thinking through how we could phrase such a warning without making it seem like it's THE interpretation of policy. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:01, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
Sure! Valereee (talk) 20:01, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
Purely from an organizational point of view, I think it's better for any further description of the quoted text to be placed on the source page for the quote (namely, the Wikipedia:Administrators page), rather than this page. isaacl (talk) 15:27, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
isaacl already found this, but for and anyone else reading this, we did start a discussion at WT:ADMIN#Involvement. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:14, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.