Wikipedia:In praise of 1RR

Although there is some information about 1RR at Wikipedia:Revert only when necessary#One-revert rule, the purpose of this essay is to provide further explanation as to why following 1RR is a good idea.

• Helping others to stay cool - if you revert only once a day, in a 1-on-1 edit war, the other editor does as well. This allows more time for discussion, which increases the chances of finding a workable compromise.

• Encouraging the involvement of other editors. If you only revert once in 24 hours, this almost certainly implies there will be times that from your perspective a page is badly wrong. Given that you can't revert, what options do you have? Well, you could seek out experts on the subject, perhaps through a relevant Wikiproject. The way Wikipedia functions, although at first this appears to be an extra burden, in fact it makes resolving disputes much easier. Also, in the (highly unlikely) event that you're wrong, at least you haven't made a complete fool of yourself by getting into a protracted battle.

• Not going over 3RR. If you put a box on your user page that proclaims you follow 1RR, and you lose your cool a little, and revert twice in 24 hours, then you feel a little foolish. In fact, more than a little. To the extent that you aren't remotely tempted to revert again for a while. In this way you won't revert more than 3 times in 24 hours. So you probably won't get blocked.

• Less confusing - there are some areas of Wikipedia that have all sorts of restrictions, however, for the most part, if you edit on a 1RR basis, you don't have to worry so much. There are very few, if any, 0RR restrictions, and the chances are you won't get into that much trouble by editing on a 1RR basis anyway.