Ad hominem revert

"ad hominem" is a Latin phrase used very commonly in English (just like "ad nauseum", and also "i.e." and "e.g." are abbreviations of Latin phrases). It is, effectively, part of English.

What it means is, in the context of an argument, referring to who made the argument, as opposed to the argument's own referents, in deciding whether to accept or reject it. It is normally considered proof that one has no real argument to offer against what is said, if one must invoke "who wrote it" as an refutation.

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An ad hominem revert is the restoring of an older version of a wiki page because of who edited it in the interim. This is different than a typical revert which is because trusting the content would lead to bad results on behalf of the end user. Tolerating ad hominem reverts may make the sysop power structure very happy, but is intolerable in any troll-friendly power structure (i.e. any that gives some status to a political dispute and realizes that ad hominem revert probably is a symptom of one), and is definitely detrimental to the overall mission of any large public wiki, unless of course that mission is to support a certain class or type of person or types of countries or specific ecoregion etc., in which case, they might block IP of all who are "outside that region" or "not part of that class". To permit ad hominem revert is to create a class of loathsome trolls who patroll outside the boundaries of the sysop power structure and work directly against that power structure to discredit it, and empower the end users who are disempowered by this kind of tactics...

An ad hominem delete is even worse, as it makes it impossible for anyone but a sysop to evaluate or restore the text, and is even more irresponsible.