Wikipedia talk:Edit warring/Archives/2017/July

3RR Exemptions

Clearly vandalism is exempt and can be reverted as often as needed. But what about good faith edits that are obviously and demonstrably wrong?

Example: Lionel Messi scores a goal and his goal count in his biography article is updated by 1 goal, and if needed reliable sources are updated. All good. But then a good faith editor increases the count by an extra one, presumably not aware that the count had already been updated. That edit needs to be reverted, but clearly is not vandalism.

These things happen frequently in sports articles I watch. Multiple times have I been in a situation where I had reverted 2 or even 3 clearly wrong edits within 24 hours, usually by different editors (often IPs), when another clearly wrong edit was made. I was forced to leave that edit alone and hope someone else would revert soon, or attract attention on the talk page. Do I understand correctly that this is how the 3RR rule is intended in these situations? I fully realize that in many cases it is not obvious whether an edit or right or wrong, but at the same time, in many case it is obvious. Thanks, Gap9551 (talk) 20:41, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

You're between the sauerkraut and the pickles there. We have a wide range of topics of varying degrees of obviousness, and while you might think this example is matter of fact, the lines get blurry fast. But, you're in luck! If that's happening, there's a reasonable chance the other ed is still online. Use Template:Ping at the article talk page and either that person or a 3rd party should see it and it might get fixed ASAP. Or you can use an inline template such as Template:Failed verification (note the "reason" parameter) and if its still there a few days later fix it then. It's not like Wikipedia is an emergency. BTW, are you sure you're counting reverts correctly? If you do 1-2-3-4-5 and there are no changes by anyone else to break up that series, technically that still only counts as "1". NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:58, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your quick response! Yes, it's about those cases where any reasonable editor would agree their edit was wrong, if they'd still be around to have it explained to them.

I know that uninterrupted reverts by me count as 1. But often it's like this: editor A edits, I revert A, then editor B edits, and I revert B. That counts as 2, right?

I like the Failed verification template idea, that is very useful. Gap9551 (talk) 21:15, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

v-e-r-y rarely, for a particular spot that gets tweaked repeatedly, you might also benefit from invisible comments for editors. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:49, 14 July 2017 (UTC)