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There is this guy trying repeatedly to edit my post (OK, three times, so far).

I disagree with the edit and do a rollback each time (which I think/hope is my privilege as the author).

Is there any way out of this loop, if he continues to edit my post?

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    Flag for moderator attention. Or you can reject his edits as soon as they come in. With enough of them, he'll be banned from reviewing.
    – Mysticial
    May 6, 2014 at 5:38
  • @Mysticial Great hint, thank you!
    – Uwe Keim
    May 6, 2014 at 5:39
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    That's the right thing in general. Why don't you want a title that is actually is good English though (AFAICT)? Yours doesn't flow very well.
    – Mat
    May 6, 2014 at 5:41
  • @Mat Thanks; I want to keep the words "English" and "Stripe" in the title (which is not an unallowed keyword, if I read the rules carefully and understand them correctly). Please feel free to change it to a better one that ideally keeps the two words.
    – Uwe Keim
    May 6, 2014 at 5:55
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    @UweKeim: I'm afraid I must be mis-understanding your question then. I understand it as that editor does - you're looking to get localized (error?) messages from that API. If that's the case, "English" ins't really necessary, and "localized (error?) message" is much more descriptive than "text". (Ok with keeping Stripe in there though, that's not an issue if it's part of the sentence.)
    – Mat
    May 6, 2014 at 6:21

2 Answers 2

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If someone is willing to engage in a rollback war with you, flag for moderator attention.
Regardless of who is "right", don't continue the fight as it accomplishes nothing.

In your case, the user is doing this via suggested edits. So you have another option of simply rejecting his edits over and over again. With enough rejects, the user will be banned from reviewing.

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Just adding to @Mystical's answer: your second rollback should've produced a "rollback war" moderator flag automatically according to animuson's answer to "Put an end to rollback wars".

I don't think this particular war had much potential to drag on after the third rollback anyway. I doubt most reasonable people would persist beyond that, and your opponent (for lack of a better term) seems reasonable enough. These edits he suggested were reviewed and received majority approval, as have 500 other edits he's performed. With only 64 rejected so far, that gives him an 89% approval rate in suggested edits; my approval rate here is only about 1% better than that. (I did better on Cross Validated though – tough crowd here!) He might be gaming the http://kevinx.net/labs/php/badge.php?txt=Copy%20Editor&c=g badge a little too hard, but he might have had a better reason too.

Stack Overflow seems to have a policy controversy with tag words in titles right now: see the MSO post, "Why is removing tags from the title suggested so often?" Whether the edit was worthwhile or not (seems to me the third time was really pushing it at least), it probably got accepted for a reason. Whether that reason is the policy issue above, or something to do with robo-reviewers (see also Rolling Back Approved Edits on MSO), it's worth considering that there might be a legitimate reason and room for compromise with it. Remember that once your personal question is resolved, your question may continue to be useful to the community as a whole. If you can give up a little control when others ask you to, it can sometimes get you more and better answers sooner, and make your question more useful or readily available to others after you have your answer. I admit this particular edit war over just the title might not be a good example of that principle, but @mat's comments suggest some room for debate.

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    Detailed answer, thanks, Nick!
    – Uwe Keim
    May 6, 2014 at 6:51
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    I would think that history of edits/rollbacks would have generated an automatic Rollback War flag from Community, but it didn't in this case. I wonder why not... /cc @UweKeim May 6, 2014 at 18:22
  • @Andrew'saUnitato As of now, I just rolled back yet another edit :-)
    – Uwe Keim
    May 6, 2014 at 18:28
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    Oh man...This guy really likes your question. Hope you raised a mod flag manually too... May 6, 2014 at 18:30
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    @UweKeim Yeah, saw that when I came here. Keeping an eye on things. My guess is he just keeps coming across it without realizing what happened, which isn't great to begin with. And he's sort of laser-focusing on that one type of edit. This is also one of those things where I want to kick some reviewers... May 6, 2014 at 19:15

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