Hello everyone!
I have noticed lately that lots of new users are, well, let’s say, “flipping out” about how wikiHow reverts bad edits and temporarily blocks people from RC Patrol, and I think this is a problem. Yesterday, I reverted Saffron Hansen’s edit on my talk page— She told me I had attitude and she said that the reverted edit I made was unnecessary. Some other people may have experienced this, and it’s getting to the point where we need to talk about it. How can we change this, so some new users can change their behavior on wikiHow and realize that all the things we do are necessary?
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GB742
2
The most important thing, to my mind, is the ‘human touch’. Reaching out to an editor when you revert an edit will help to ensure that they know (to some extent) what the problem was with the edit. I think most frustration that new editors experience as a result of their edits being reverted comes from not knowing what they did wrong - dropping them a friendly message, maybe including links to policy or guidelines, can help with that. Depending on what sort of patrolling you’re doing, undoing an edit rather than reverting it will allow you to note why you reverted the edit, rather than appearing as a potential faceless rejection.
On the point of
I think we need to keep in mind that, whilst the vast majority of patrolling is done well and in good faith, mistakes can and do happen, so we should continue to encourage a dialogue between patrollers and editors to allow anyone who accidentally slips up to learn from what happened.
Obviously, if the reaction to an edit being reverted is unduly aggressive/destructive/etc. then the ANB can be used to get assistance with that.
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Thank you. I’ll reach out to an editor, but I just wanted to make sure someone knew about this. Unfortunately, this may be a common problem. I’ve even seen users who have been on wikiHow for a longer amount of time react to blocks and messages like this. Yet, we haven’t found a way to reverse this, in old users and new. But I think we should start discussing this more often, in wikiHow and in the forums. If that doesn’t work, then we should try something else.
Nicely said, and I agree. If I can’t find a solution to this, yes, I will reach out to an editor. The commentary here should help others fix this problem, if they have experienced it!
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