Wikipediocracy

To see what would happen, I made this edit to the Social proof article. I've found that trying to add text to social science articles often earns a brusque response. Sure enough, the edit was reverted about an hour later. The revert might be justified, because unless that academic paper actually says the words, "social proof" somewhere in it (and that's difficult to determine since it is behind a pay wall), it could be considered synthesis to use it in that article.

Here's the thing, however. I looked at the editor's contributions and it appears that about 90% of the editor's edits are reverts to social science articles. The editor rarely tries to discuss the disputed content first. He/she just reverts, reverts, and reverts some more. I expect that this probably discourages a lot of the newbie editors from ever trying to edit WP again. How many revert warriors like this does WP have?

Cla68 wrote:How many revert warriors like this does WP have?

Far too many. You're right that this is a major turn-off for newcomers.

Cla68 wrote:To see what would happen, I made this edit to the Social proof article. I've found that trying to add text to social science articles often earns a brusque response. Sure enough, the edit was reverted about an hour later. The revert might be justified, because unless that academic paper actually says the words, "social proof" somewhere in it (and that's difficult to determine since it is behind a pay wall), it could be considered synthesis to use it in that article.

Here's the thing, however. I looked at the editor's contributions and it appears that about 90% of the editor's edits are reverts to social science articles. The editor rarely tries to discuss the disputed content first. He/she just reverts, reverts, and reverts some more. I expect that this probably discourages a lot of the newbie editors from ever trying to edit WP again. How many revert warriors like this does WP have?

Personally I agree with the reversion and would have made it myself if I had seen your addition, but I agree with your general point also, there are a lot of people who revert constantly without even going to the article talk page.

I haven't looked at the article in question but I have also noticed a lot of revert warriors. Its common among certain projects like US Roads, Wisconsin, Novels and a number of others. Additionally, its also common among non christian articles like those pertaining to Witchcraft, paganism, and other non mainstream religions. Some reversions are valid, many are not. I have seen cases where typo, grammar and puncuation fixes were reverted sight unseen for petty reasons...like not a member of [insert your favorite project here].

Wondering if he's the "Andrew" listed here:

http://socialidentityresources.com/the-authors/

In addition to the revert warriors, there are also the speedy deletion douchebags, like this guy. (Permalink because his next edit was to blank the comment.) Eric may find that of interest, as one of his nominations was of a notable audio hardware designer.