Wikipedia talk:Don't bludgeon the process

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

I revised some lines in the article, and stated my careful reasons, to delete the wrong parts that said (basically) "making a dozen comments" is bludgeoning. But now my edit was reverted with a mistaken justification "a dozen comments is bludgeoning" which is false for multiple reasons:

1. If a discussion has 500 or 1,000 comments, then making 12 comments about various points or individual arguments is not bludgeoning and is not a problem. A drop in a bucket is not dominating the bucket. A drop, or ten drops, in the bucket is not annoying the 10,000 other drops in bucket.

2. The definition of bludgeoning has to involve the nature and quality of the comments. A discussion may have many points raised, or perhaps even 12 different falsehoods by 12 different people, therefore the mere existence of 12 comments by a single person can't be "bludgeoning" as that would ban normal discussion. Therefore we define bludgeoning by what the comments are doing or attempting, and the effect on the discussion page, not by a random number.

3. The article rightly makes reference to many kinds of behaviors and motives that are a problem, and none of them reduce to a raw number of comments. For good reason.

4. If what I'm saying is wrong, then the entire article could be deleted and replaced with: Never make more than 5 (or whatever number) comments in any discussion, no matter how large the discussion is, no matter what anyone said. That's bludgeoning. Of course, there is no rule against making multiple comments in a public wiki discussion, and there never should be a sweeping unqualified rule like that.

I'm tempted to undo the reversion, but my summary would need my explanation and argument...which seems better for this Talk page. RandomEditor6772314 (talk) 02:51, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

Hi RandomEditor6772314, I see you're relatively new to Wikipedia, that's why I gave advice on your talk page. Yes, if a discussion has 500 comments, then a user should be content with adding their own opinions, and not respond to 12 individual comments, even if they disagree with all of them. See WP:VOTE - Wikipedia does not determine consensus by a vote. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 03:05, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

• If a discussion had 1000 comments and you have 12 unique replies that had merit and covered individual aspects, no one would say you are bludgeoning. If you were repeating the same thing over and over, then you might be bludgeoning but few discussions have that many comments, so this is a bit hypothetical. 12 unique comments out of 1000 wouldn't be considered "dominating" (by the definition given in the essay). Giving 12 comments saying basically the same thing in a discussion with only 20 or 30 other comments IS bludgeoning. It isn't that difficult. Most people know it when they see it. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 05:53, 19 April 2026 (UTC)