Wikipedia:Using the balanced editing restriction
 | This is an essay on the balanced editing restriction and conduct policies. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
The balanced editing restriction is designed to discourage single-purpose accounts at articles about the Arab-Israeli conflict by requiring editors to make no more than 1/3 of their edits in the article, article talk, draft, and draft talk spaces included in that topic in any given 30-day period. An edit made in violation is considered a topic-ban violation.
Tracking
[edit]PIA editing percentages can be tracked manually by dividing an editor's hits on Filter 1339 by their total edits to the four tracked namespaces. For instance, (example).
They can also be tracked with the tool n-ninety-five, which automates that process. Results are interpreted (how?).
The imposing admin does not need to do anything manually to enable this tracking, but violations create no notification.
Requirements and considerations for administrators
[edit]The restriction can be placed by an individual administrator or by rough consensus at AE.
A balanced editing restriction, even when made by an individual admin, is considered inherently an Arbitration Enforcement action and must be logged at Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log.
The editor can be alerted with the following:
You are subject to a balanced editing restriction for the next <TIME>. Please read that section in full, and keep the following points in mind:
- The topic-ban portion of the restriction, which applies outside of the main, talk, draft, and draft talk namespaces, except in your userspace, applies immediately, and works like any other topic ban.
- The percentage-based portion becomes relevant 30 days from now.
- You can track your PIA editing percentage manually, by dividing your hits on Filter 1339 by your total edits to the four tracked namespaces; or with the tool n-ninety-five, which automates that process (source code).
This action is appealable to <VENUE>.
Venue can be specified as to either AE or ANI or as to ARCA. For this reason, an appeal that an administrator believes should not go to ANI must be specified as going only to ARCA; AE cannot be specified. Requiring an appeal go only to ARCA may mean considering the relative benefits of a time-limited vs. indefinite restriction.
Those assessing an editor's contributions should note that a restricted user effectively cannot violate the restriction until at least 30 days after the sanction has been imposed.
Technical limitations
[edit]For technical reasons, the balanced editing restriction requires the editor being topic-banned from discussing PIA except within article, article talk, draft, draft talk, and their own user and user talk spaces. This means they won't be able to participate in PIA-related discussions in Wikipedia space, such as at noticeboards or AfD.
Also for technical reasons, the restriction considers the number of edits, not the amount of added text. This is a feature rather than a bug, as while either type of measure could be gamed, in theory gaming to create multiple small edits could encourage small positive contributions, while gaming to add text would tend to encourage padding and discourage removal of unuseful content.