Wikipedia:Wheel war
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A wheel war is a struggle between two or more administrators in which they undo one another's administrative actions — specifically, unblocking and reblocking a user; undeleting and redeleting; or unprotecting and reprotecting a page. Do not repeat an administrative action when you know that another administrator opposes it. Do not continue a chain of administrative reversals without discussion.
Sanctions for wheel warring have varied from reprimands and cautions, to temporary blocks, to desysopping, even for first time incidents. Wheel warring has been used as grounds for immediate revocation of adminship following Arbitration in a number of cases. For summaries and citations of relevant arbitration cases, and example scenarios, see /Examples.
Possible indications and alternatives
Possible indications of wheel warring are:
- Administrators getting too distressed to discuss something.
- An administrator undoes another administrator's actions without consultation.
- An administrator deliberately ignores an existing discussion (often at the Administrators noticeboard/Incidents or Deletion review) and implements their own preferred action or version of an edit.
- An administrative action is repeatedly performed and reversed (by anyone).
If you feel the need to wheel war, try these alternatives:
- Discuss the substantive issue with opposing administrators.
- Post the issue to AN and wait for comment from other administrators.
- Seek dispute resolution, just as you would in case of a potential edit war.
- Have a nice cup of tea or coffee and a sit down
Wikipedia works on the spirit of consensus; disputes should be settled through civil discussion rather than power wrestling.
See also
- Wikipedia:Three revert rule
- Wheel war
- Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard
- Wikipedia:Resolving disputes
- Wikipedia:List of controversial issues
- Wikipedia:Adminitis