Wikipedia:Wheel war

This page documents an English Wikipedia policy.

It describes a widely accepted standard that all editors should normally follow. Changes made to it should reflect consensus.

Shortcuts

This page in a nutshell: All administrative actions are subject to a one-revert rule. Think long and hard before reverting another administrator's actions.

A wheel war is a struggle between two or more admins in which they undo another's administrative actions — specifically, unblocking and reblocking a user; undeleting and redeleting; or unprotecting and reprotecting an article. Most editors (and admins) tend to agree that wheel wars are a Bad Thing. Just as edit warring is considered harmful and needlessly divisive, so is wheel warring considered improper behavior for an administrator.

A wheel war starts when a privileged action is repeated without an attempt to form consensus after it was reverted. Thus a single reversion of a privileged action (for example, one admin deletes a page and a second admin undeletes it) is not considered a wheel war; a wheel war would start if the page was deleted a second time without an effort to find consensus. Although admin actions may be reverted once, it is often worth discussing the original admin action before undoing it, especially when it is not clear whether the original action was appropriate.

Possible indications

Possible indications of wheel warring are:

Admins get too distressed to discuss something.
An admin takes it upon himself to undo another admin's actions without consultation.
An admin deliberately ignores an existing discussion (often at WP:ANI or WP:DRV) and implements his or her preferred action or version of an edit.
An administrative action is repeatedly performed and reversed (by anyone).

Sanctions

Sometimes, admins are temporarily blocked for wheel warring. However, this can result in a wheel war itself, which creates an escalation of conflict and should therefore be avoided. Wheel warring may result in loss of administrative privileges through the arbitration process. Wheel warring has been used as grounds for sanctions by ArbCom in a few cases^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5] (see summaries of these cases as they pertain to wheel warring) and by User:Jimbo Wales in the case of another administrator undoing one of his blocks.^[6]

Alternatives

If you feel the need to wheel war, try these alternatives:

Discuss the substantive issue with opposing admins.
Post the issue to AN and wait for comment from other admins.
Seek dispute resolution, just as you would in case of a potential edit war.
A nice cup of tea and a sit down

Wikipedia works on the spirit of consensus; disputes should be settled through civil discussion rather than power wrestling.

Examples

The most often questioned example is of the slow-motion wheel war:

Admin A blocks User X. Admin B unblocks User X. Admin C blocks User X. Admin D unblocks User X. Admin E blocks User X. Admin F unblocks User X.

Although no admin is repeating his actions or undoing the same action twice, the result is nevertheless a wheel war between two groups of admins. Perhaps all have acted in good faith in the belief that their actions are supported by policy and community consensus. Nevertheless, dispute resolution is in order here. At some point, it should be pointed out that this is a wheel war and all parties must stop. Just as protecting a page is not an endorsement of the current version, so is stopping a wheel war not an endorsement of the current state.

Cases of wheel warring used as grounds for sanctions by ArbCom

External links

[1] Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pedophilia userbox wheel war

[2] Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Freestylefrappe

[3] Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Tony Sidaway

[4] Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Guanaco, MarkSweep, et al

[5] Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Daniel Brandt deletion wheel war

[6] Notice from Jimmy Wales about desysopping

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