Wikipedia:Wheel war

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WP:WW redirects here; you may also be looking for Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words (shortcut: WP:AWW) or Wikipedia:WikiProject WikipediaWeekly (shortcut: WP:WWPC).

The following is a proposed Wikipedia policy, guideline, or process. The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption. References or links to this page should not describe it as "policy".

A proposal's status is not determined simply by counting votes.

Shortcut: WP:WW WP:WHEEL

This policy in a nutshell:

Do not repeat an administrative action when you know that another administrator opposes it.

A wheel war is a struggle between two or more admins in which they undo another's administrative actions — specifically, unblocking or reblocking a user; undeleting or redeleting; or unprotecting and reprotecting an article.

Undoing another admin's action once is not considered a wheel war, although it is still preferable to discuss it with the other admin first. Doing it twice, or repeating your admin action after someone has undone it, is wheel warring.

Most editors (and admins) tend to agree that wheel wars are a bad thing. Just as edit warring is considered harmful and needlessly divisive, wheel warring is not considered proper behaviour for an administrator.

1 Causes
2 Sanctions
3 Alternatives
4 Examples
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Causes

Causes for wheel warring include when

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) to implement his preferred action or version of an edit.
An administrative action is repeatedly performed and reversed (by anyone).

[edit] Sanctions

Sometimes, admins are temporarily blocked for wheel warring, but this can result in a wheel war itself: an escalation of conflict, therefore to be avoided.

Wheel warring may result in loss of administrative privileges via arbitration process; alternatively, the violator may be reprimanded or cautioned.

Wheel warring has been used as grounds for sanctions by ArbCom in a few cases. [1] [2] [3] [4] See summaries of these cases as they pertain to wheel warring.

[edit] 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.
WP:TEA

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

[edit] Examples

A table of example cases is available. Note that these are intended merely to illuminate the policy, not to modify it.

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 parties. Perhaps all have acted in good faith, with the best intentions, and 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 both parties must stop. Just like page protection is not an endorsement of the current version, neither is stopping a wheel war an endorsement of the current state.