 | This is an essay on civility. 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. |
 | This page in a nutshell: You may want to opt out of automatic notifications that your edits have been reverted. |
The process of reverting edits is a fundamental and necessary part of editing Wikipedia. Sometimes, you will have good reason to revert another user's edit. If you have edited here for any length of time, you very likely have had some of your own edits reverted by someone else.
In the normal process of creating content, these reverts are simply a step in a process of discussing and improving an article. It should not be anything personal or adversarial. It should not make you feel bad. Your first impulse should not be to revert again to restore your edit. You may be able to find alternative solutions to the edit. In particular, you should carefully read the edit summary of the revert, to understand the other editor's concerns. All these things take a bit of time.
The Wikipedia notification system lets you know about various events that may be of interest to you. Some of these things, such as being mentioned or thanked by another editor, can be very pleasant news. However, the system can also alert you that an edit that you made has been reverted. Getting such an alert can make you feel like you are being notified of something urgent, something that requires your attention right away. Because the editor who reverted your edit disagreed with you, this in turn can feel like there is an urgent problem with someone criticizing you. The notification tends to exaggerate the significance of the revert. If you respond quickly at the page where the revert happened, you may feel like there is a bigger problem than there actually is. Feeling that way is counterproductive to editing Wikipedia, because you may not yet have fully considered the ways in which you and the other editor might reach consensus, and you might be tempted to edit war. It can also diminish your enjoyment of editing, by needlessly giving you a false feeling of conflict. In this way, a notification of a revert (unlike a notification of thanks for one of your edits, or of a mention by another editor) may be something that detracts from your editing.