Wikidata:Requests for comment/More people should comment on this rv and block

An editor has requested the community to provide input on "More people should comment on this rv and block" via the Requests for comment (RFC) process. This is the discussion page regarding the issue. If you have an opinion regarding this issue, feel free to comment below. Thank you!

Петър Петров (talk • contribs • logs)

Hi all. Recently I got reverted and blocked without much ceremony. I was simply given a blocknotice, like, you know, the people that add penis images to articles. I would like to see the opinions and hopefully some arguments of more people, admins or not. For reference see my recent contribution history and talk page. I will write my POV here below.

• Having
  1. "man (Q8441) subclass of (P279) person (Q215627)"
  2. "man (Q8441) sex or gender (P21) male (Q6581097)"
  3. "Larry Sanger (Q185) P107 (P107) person (Q215627)"
  4. "Larry Sanger (Q185) sex or gender (P21) male (Q6581097)"

I added

• "Larry Sanger (Q185) instance of (P31) man (Q8441)"

and deleted

• "Larry Sanger (Q185) P107 (P107) person (Q215627)"
• "Larry Sanger (Q185) sex or gender (P21) male (Q6581097)"

As simple as that. In simple words Larry is still male because he is now a man, a specific kind of person. But this change gets reverted by Ricordisamoa (talk • contribs • logs) and without communication. Nothing in the resume or talk page. Okay, I think to myself, this guy must have seen a user with red userpage editing something as important as the 185-th item in the database. Not nice judgement but it happens. I redo the change and provide the arguments. I also hint about the talk page, you know, it's for when people have to understand each other. Whoa, it gets rv like a bot! No, a bot at least posts something on the user talk page, that's worse. I don't see what more to do. The guy clearly doesn't want to bother to communicate. So I rv his rv. Maybe that would get the attention. And yes, it gets it. John F. Lewis (talk • contribs • logs) simply states that I do vandalisms and I should not edit wikidata in the next 24h. Jdforrester (talk • contribs • logs) adds his opinion. I'm really not sure if he's saying I should edit wikidata less often because I didn't ask anybody before that. Main point: he says I deserve the block because I didn't communicate. With whom? How? And there's Ajraddatz (talk • contribs • logs) who talks. Awesome, he explains how he sees the events. I don't understand why he thinks something I did is not entirely correct but that's up for discussion with him and I will. And then I look into the log history to see that I'm actually unbanned by John F. Lewis right after Ajraddatz wrote his comment. Again, no communication, no notice, no nothing. And what I'm supposed to do afterwards? Abide from editing anymore without permission? But I have the permission, everybody has, that's an open wiki. Then?

I'd like to get an explanation how my edits were deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikidata, aka vandalism. --Петър Петров (talk) 20:38, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Comments by Rschen7754

I plan to comment on this, but for now I have notified all parties mentioned above out of courtesy. --Rschen7754 20:46, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, I should have done that myself. Thank you. --Петър Петров (talk) 20:50, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Comment by Ajraddatz

I've already made my position on the block clear on project chat and on Петър Петров's talk page. His actions were certainly not vandalism, and certainly not deserving of any block. He received no notice from any involved admins of what they thought he was doing wrong, only rollback and blank undo messages and a generic block reason of "vandalism".

I say that Петър Петров's changes were not entirely correct because of my understand of how Wikidata is currently set up, so that the correct statements would be "instance of -> person" and "sex -> male". However, there seems to be the potential for "instance of -> man" to work in the future, as described on the project chat. It might even work that way already. I would appreciate more input on the PC thread on this topic, to form some sort of consensus over which to use in the future. Ajraddatz (Talk) 20:57, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Comment by Vogone

Yes, I agree. This situation could have been handled way better and mistakes were made by several admins here, in my opinion. First of all, I have no understanding for Ricordisamoa's lack of willingness to communicate here, especially since even the revision he rollbacked the edits to were also not correct (P107 shouldn't be used at all, anymore) and he in fact even abused our rollback guidelines. John F. Lewis' action was probably caused by a lack of further investigation before rollbacking again and blocking the account. Secondly, I fail to see what Jdforrester tries to express with his comment. The lack of communication happened on both sides, probably even more on Ricordi's. You cannot expect from a user to stop edits he considers to be right if you do not communicate with him and do not tell him what exactly he did wrong. I think John F. Lewis has understood his mistake and thus unblocked, but an excuse or something similar would of course have led to more clarification in this case. Anyway, what is left to say; making mistakes is human, and I am confident a similar situation will never happen again. This here was caused by a unfortunate series of events and in my opinion we can forget this if the involved admins see their own mistakes and excuse themselves here. Regarding to the content matter itself, I fully agree with Ajraddatz above. Thank you. Vogone talk 21:24, 1 September 2013 (UTC)