Forum:Policy proposal: One-revert rule

Summary

 * Do not revert somebody else's reversion on an article. Discuss the issue on the talk page instead.
 * Do not revert anybody's re-reversion that breaks this policy. Kindly inform them about the policy and point them to the discussion on the content.
 * Discussion on the breaking of 1RV (or lack of) goes to user talk page instead of article talk page.
 * Discussion on the content in dispute goes to article talk page instead of user talk page.
 * Discussion on continual editing conflicts should be presented to the War Room.
 * This does not apply to obvious vandalism that cannot be attributed to (potentially misguided) good-faith.

Details
Articles on CODwiki contain both facts and opinions. This is a good thing, as our goal is to be a guide for the game and often both kinds of information are useful to the reader.

We encourage editors to be bold in editing pages, but not all edits are of equal value. An edit may introduce erroneous data, or give poor advice, and these should be removed. We highly value the quality of information in articles, so, by tradition, editors are allowed the freedom to revert a good faith edit of another editor if they believe that edit to be incorrect.

However, such reversions may be used at most once.

If you find your edit was reverted, take your case to the article's talk page. Explain why you believe your edit was good and belongs in the article. Complete agreement is not necessary: as long as there is a general consensus in favor of your edits, they will eventually be returned to the page. Note that they may not return in precisely the manner you desire, nor will your contributions be immune from being edited mercilessly by others. Strategy and opinions change over time, and new contributors to CODwiki bring with them new perspectives.

The revert rule applies to the article, not the person.

No revert wars
When you see somebody breaking this policy (ie, an article getting reverted twice), do not revert it back to the only-reverted-once state. Just leave it alone and note the occurrence in the talk page.

Corollary: Do not re-revert, do not re-re-revert, do not re-re-re-revert.

Exception: A first revert without any explanation conflicts with Call of Duty Wiki:Assume Good Faith, is not protected by this policy, and may be fair game for re-reversion. However, remember to assume good faith of the conflict with the policy, and do not simply re-revert any unexplained edit without reviewing both versions of the article.

Breaking this rule
Breaking the "only revert once" rule can subject the user to being blocked. This is not an automatic ban: an administrator will examine the user's actions and justification.

Discussion
While not a huge problem on the wiki, I feel that a basic revert policy will strengthen the grassroots procedures for editors to follow, thus improving not only the quality of the wiki, but also the attitude and atmosphere. We seek to establish an environment that all editors, new or old, can feel comfortable working in without having to worry about conflicts with other users in regards to writing and editing articles.

One problem we do have is that we fail to follow COD:CONSENSUS consistently. We don't need policies for every single problem, but very few issues are sorted out on article talk pages, where consensus is usually first established. The War Room is open for discussions, but only if it concerns site-wide issues that require community discussion. Articles only need localised discussion to talk place, with admins taking arbitrator roles when required.

This policy would reduce edit conflicts and disagreements and encourage more discussion on talk pages to reach consensus without further edit warring. --Scottie theNerd 15:23, June 28, 2010 (UTC)