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Wikipedia:Third opinion

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Dominick (talk | contribs) at 15:12, 10 October 2005 (→Active disagreements). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
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The Third Opinion is a guide for the use of third-party mediators in a dispute. Sometimes editors cannot come to a compromise, and require a tiebreaker—a third opinion.

In the context of disagreements—related to policy or content—sometimes these disputes involve only two editors. This frequently happens on obscure pages, which not many people watch.

Dispute resolution
(Requests)
Tips
Content disputes
Conduct disputes

Reasoning

Some things can only be done one way or another. Despite good will on both sides, some disagreements cannot be solved without outside help. When only two people are involved, this may lead to a deadlock. This page is meant to provide a streamlined process for solving disagreements involving only two editors.

Guidelines

Listing

  • Any editor may list any controversy involving only two editors. If you are not one of the participants in the disagreement, however, you are encouraged to provide a third opinion yourself.
  • This page is meant only for disagreements involving precisely two people. If more are involved, try convincing—or coming to a compromise with—the other people. If that fails, try other Wikipedia dispute-solving procedures.
  • If a third opinion has been provided in a disagreement, please remove it from the list below (regardless of whether you listed it in the first place). If you provide a third opinion in any disagreement below, please remove it from the list.

Providing Third Opinions

  • Only provide third opinions on the relevant talk pages, not on this page.
  • While this page is meant to provide a swift procedure, do not provide third opinions recklessly. Remember that in most cases listed on this page, you alone get to decide either way. Read the arguments of the disputants thoroughly.
  • Consider watching pages on which you state your opinion for a week or so, to ensure your opinion is not ignored. Articles listed on this page are frequently watched by very few people.
  • You are, of course, entirely free to provide a third option—that is, to disagree with both disputants. If you do this, as in all cases in which a third opinion has been provided, remove the article from the list below.

Active disagreements

Add new conflicts at the bottom. Use short (one line), neutral descriptions, and provide links to locations where more information is available. Do not sign your name, but add a date (using "~~~~~" - five tildes). Please do not discuss the disagreement on this page.

It will help if everyone who lists something here weighs in another disagreement.

Listings that do not follow instructions may be removed.

  • Civil Air Patrol - There are currently two disputes brewing: what are appropriate links and how should they be organized; and the rewrite of the article introduction. See Talk:Civil Air Patrol. Thanks. 13:05, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
  • April 2005 - First editor argues that after a current events page is archived, the sources should be removed and items pruned back. Others disagree. 02:11, 3 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Andrew Wakefield - Two versions continue to diverge. Material favorable to Wakefield is routinely deleted by anon, without explanation. Because of growing disparity, it is increasingly difficult to integrate anon's contributions critical of Wakefield. Ombudsman 21:07, 3 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Talk: Elizabeth Morgan User:Amorrow is engaged in very bizare behavior there. Issuing ultamatums, and using it as their own personal talk page/staging point to disrupt Wikipedia. 23:47, August 8, 2005 (UTC)
  • Animal Crossing - User:A Link to the Past disagrees with me if www.project-hyrule.com belongs in the external links for the animal crossing article. the argument is scattered across our respective talk pages, so I'll post it in the talk page for that article.
  • Template_talk:Mumbai infobox - Dispute going on about what information to include in the Mumbai infobox. Should it list statistics regarding only the municipality (city) of Mumbai proper? or should it also list statistics about the whole metropolitan area of Mumbai? 00:57, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

I would like others opinion on NPOV dispute on the history section. I have provided lots of info on the Talk page. 11:43, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

  • Talk:Communitarianism: not exactly a conflict, more a matter of remarks on a talk page that I cannot really follow, but which seem to come from some sort of political agenda. Someone might want to look in on this. -- 01:43, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
  • Din (Arabic term) I would like others opinion on a dispute about NPOV, quoting, and original research in the article. The disscussion is on the talk page of the article under State your objections. Please help. 19:29, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
  • true - dispute over maintaining neutral point of view resulting in endless revert battlebetween the two sides17:43, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
  • truth - dispute over maintaining neutral point of view resulting in endless revert battle between the two sides17:43, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
  • epistemology - dispute over maintaining neutral point of view resulting in endless revert battlebetween the two sides17:43, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
  • knowledge - dispute over section conflating knowledge and belief resulting in endless revert battle between the two sides17:43, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Jeff Koons, see-saw two-person dispute on appropriateness of content about "Puppy" sculpture. Shortage of other editors from whom to solicit comment. 22:14, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Hypnosis, one editor feels that their online novel is an appropriate external link because hypnotism is a central element of it. The other editor feels that given Wikipedia's aims, external links should be limited to factual content, and that linking this novel from the article would be a precedent for linking any online novel from the article for whatever the central theme of the novel is. -- 00:03, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Jean Charles de Menezes, new editor feels that it is POV or speculative to infer that this person was shot by police because they were considered a suspect in the 21 July 2005 London Bombings unless this motivation is specifically stated by police. Does not consider that it logically follows that because surveillance officers were told he was a suspect, and surveillance officers called in shooting officers, that shooting officers considered him a suspect. Revert war ongoing. -- 00:45, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
  • Real Madrid Dispute over whether a Best XI Lineup for 2005/6 is not inherently against NPOV. One side (suspect same user) has been asked to discuss on the Talk Page of Real Madrid but does not seem to understand the issue. 02:07, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Jodie Foster: Censoring of facts about Foster's career as commercial actres by Patadybag August 26, 2005
  • Precautionary Principle. Disputes over definition. More eyes also needed to generally improve a fairly messy article. 12:43, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Kulturkampf, Settlement Commission and probably everything that is connected to the Category:Anti-Polonism - dispute over the legitimacy of the category in the articles concerning the NPOV-policy, resulting in revert battles between the two sides.00:12, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Jewish-Roman wars simple dispute over attempt to clean up this disambiguation page is fully described on talk page, third opinion needed 06:51, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Allies of World War II. A deadlock in a dispute of whether the Nazi-Soviet alliance in 1939 should be mentioned or not. The dispute is summarised here. 20:37, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Religious Freedom Watch.
    • Dispute over claim that RFW is one of the "Secret PR Front Groups." Contributor of claim refuses to attribute even upon request to apply Wikipedia:Verifiability. See talk page. 23:50, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
    • Above contributor deliberately mischaracterizes the debate. It is not over whether Religious Freedom Watch is a front organization for an entity that has been found by the FBI to employ such front groups and refer to them by the above description, but whether it is widely believed that it is one of the entity's front groups. 01:21, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Boxing Day. Threatened to escalate into an edit war, over whether Boxing Day is always 26 December (as popular UK usage now has it) or whether it is the first weekday after Christmas. An attempt to acknowledge both schools of thought was reverted by hard-line supporters of the second view. Additionally, an unregistered user is engaging in persistent vandalism by putting up a claim that when 26 December is a Saturday, Monday 28 December, the bank holiday in lieu, is called Boxing Day (this has never happened). 16:08, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
  • History of the Internet. There is a dispute over the origins of the Internet. It is in question as to if ARPANET is the sole notable network to contribute to the Internet, or if UUCP/Usenet and X.25 should also be mentioned as contributing networks, cultures and technologies. Information on UUCP and X.25 is regularly deleted from the article after being added. Discussion on the talk page is not occuring fully, despite a contraversial tag. --John R. Barberio talk, contribs 17:48, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Icon. POV dispute over general history and theology of icons has developed into a slow moving edit war; one party is unregistered and is not discussing changes on the Talk page. 16:13, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Black Hebrew Israelites. There is a dispute over wording and basic priniples of this faith. I am biased, have nothing to contribute factually and, therefore do not want to be the third party. I'm tired of seeing the same paragraph changed back and forth, and showing up on my watchlist. From what I can tell, both seem to have very realistic facts, but delivery of both are POV. Personally, I think they could be combined. But, having seen one of the users post Holocaust Denial information to the Holocaust page, I really don't want to be involved. This is not to say that I haven't made an attempt. I thought that Black Hebrews and Black Hebrew Israelites were the same thing. My changes were reverted, and one of the disputants kindly told me I was incorrect without flame.
  • Methodological naturalism. There was a question as to whether the page should be redirected to naturalism (philosophy) which currently contains the material from the proposed redirect. Also, and inappropriate VfD was started for the page by a user who believed that AfD can function as a sort of vote for whether to merge and article or not. As there has been no one who has argued for the article to be deleted, this VfD was replaced with a twoversions tag. Joshuaschroeder 18:23, 7 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ohio Wesleyan University. user:Indrian and I have been engaged in a debate over three issues on the OWU article: (1) user:Indrian removed three sentences in three separate paragraphs of the article all related to gay issues at Ohio Wesleyan University without much explanation and I believe it is too much of a coincidance that they are all gay-related to be a random act. I believe their omission constitutes a shift of the article to a more POV state and is likely to have homophobic underpinnings. (2) Second disagreement emerged when user:Indrian removed a reference to a Facebook chart listing the political leanings of current Ohio Wesleyan students without any discussion in the talk page. Now the same user is threatening me with a Request for Comment. (3) user:Indrian removed an entire section about activism at OWU. I was a student until 2 years ago and I have witnessed first-hand that volunteering and activism are a huge part of the campus culture and a separate section is justified about Activism. user:Indrian is an experienced user whose contributions I highly value but it seems we may need some help on the proper way to resolve our minor differences since the user is unwilling to discuss any of the issues and resorts to reverting. Faria 05:28, 10 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Russification - a deadlock on whether the content is Russophobic/Russophilic POV. Reverts but virtually no discussion. 17:56, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Open Source Religion (talk) Broad sweeping statements are made about open source religion without reference to sources other than the author's own writings as the founder of Yoism. This article does not appear to be from a Neutral Point of View, it is an original piece of research that has not been made available for scrutiny by researchers into comparative religion elsewhere, and it makes no references to credible sources directly discussing open source religion, thereby making it unverifiable. 12:50, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Sam Sloan and User:Billbrock: Bill Brock, a Chicago CPA and Chess Player has been attacking me on various Internet sites for at least three years. If you will go to the Usenet Group rec.games.chess.politics at http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.chess.politics and search for postings by politikalhack@gmail.com about Sam Sloan, you will see that he has attacked me 127 times in just the past three months, including several times today, and yet the man knows nothing about me other than what he has read on the Internet. Here in Wikipedia, Bill Brock had posted two Vfd and one NPOV all of which have been rejected after a vote. He then modified my biography (all of which have been written by people whom I do not know personally) several times. If I were to write my own biography I would write it completely diferently, but I have decided not to interfere with what others say about me. For example, if I were to write my own page on Wikipedia, I would mention that I won the World Championship of Chinese Chess (Xiangqi) for non-Chinese in Beijing China in 1988 but finished second in Singapore in 1990, that I represented the United States in the World International Shogi Championship in Tokyo in 1984 and that I played in the finals of the National Championship of Thai Chess (Makrook Thai) in Bangkok in 1990. I also have a weekly Cable TV Show in Brooklyn and I publish books.

Bill Brock has repeatedly deleted what others have written about me and substituted his own, usually false, version. I believe that Bill Brock user:Billbrock should be barred and blacklisted from posting anything about me on Wikipedia. 13:51, 15 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Hypnosis -- see Talk:Hypnosis and edit summaries on the article.
    • One contributor feels that the "NPOV" way to write the article is as if there was scientific consensus that hypnosis (and with his recent editing, brainwashing and mind control) exist and behave exactly as his personal beliefs on the matter suggest they do. He reverts any attempt to balance the introduction with the claim that the view that hypnosis may not exist is a "smear job" and unreferenced and should be buried deep in the article to make it "NPOV". -- 17:48, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Ray Nagin I have just joined wikipedia and have instantly been subjected to calumny and personal attacks at the Ray Nagin article. Is this typical? I was accused of being a "sock" in my very first edit, and the edit was reverted/blanked in violation of Wikipedia's policies. Please provide input whether the responsibilities of Nagin during Hurricane Katrina, sourced to state and federal official documents (it's in the history), is an appropriate and NPOV addition to the article. Thanks. --DKorn 19:37, 17 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fritz Lang - A debate is currently in progress on the talk page of this article as to whether or not Fritz Lang was, during the first part of his career, a German Expressionist filmmaker.
    • One editor has cited a source which disputes the POV which the article currently states as undisputed fact, that Lang was an Expressionist. Since no source at all has been cited for the view that Lang was an Expressionist, this editor feels it is reasonable for the article to at least note that there is dispute that he was one. 03:08, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
    • Another editor (myself) has taken the view that this source does not prove what the other editor thinks it does, and has asked for a direct quote from Lang himself. See the section headed "Expressionism" at Talk:Fritz Lang 21:28, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Jack the Ripper Murders and Freemasonry - The resident self-appointed editor 'Dreamguy' has completely deleted three times the entry on the Jack the Ripper Suspects page, left me an accusatory message, deleted my response on the talk page. He continually accuse me of being an 'Anti-Mason' bigot, and appears to be a Freemason who does not respect the spirit of Wikipedia as he seems to view the pages on Jack the Ripper as well as Freemasonry as his personal webpage. He even deleted the isbn and publisher reference for a well read book that was the basis for two movies on the subject. I myself never delete others entries as I believe it is not in the spirit of Wikopedia whatsoever. Everyone is entitled to their views and if they are in conflict they can have seperate headings. The individual 'Dreamguy' appears to be acting as sometime of Masonic thought police, and this can not be allowed to continue. He should be free to post his views or contradict others, but not delete repeatedly and maliciously any reference he dislikes, especially ones involving the inclusion of Freemasonry in the list of Jack the Ripper suspects.
  • Battle of Wołodarka (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) - a dispute arose after User:Irpen started claiming that the battle was not a Polish victory but rather unconcluded. He changed his mind now, but insists on keeping the dispute tag since now he claims that the battle was not a Polish victory but rather a Russian failure. Asking for sources at the talk page was unsuccessful and I'm afraid future attempts at settling the dispute between the two of us could be taken personal by Irpen so I believe some oppinions from the outside are needed. Halibutt 08:45, 18 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Category:Order of Merit recipients - Perhaps this is not the correct place to put this dispute but I can't seem to find where would the correct page be. Yesterday I created Category:Order of Merit recipients and as I type single handed due to disability it took quite some time to populate it. I was quite proud to have created my first category and wanted to have my name listed as the creator of the category. Today User:Proteus send my a very frusterating message saying that the category was fundementally wrong since the Order has members not recipients. He the proceded to create Category:Members of the Order of Merit as a new entity and depopulated "my" category and putting the articles into "his" categories. Isn't there some way to merge the categoies or rename the original category. Its just that I spent so long doing it that it now seems all my work will not be recorded. If this is not the correct place so discuss this place point me to the right place. User:Michael Drew01:25, 28 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Air America Radio, specifically the bottom of the "ratings" section, where a quote was added by an anonymous editor. Editor #1, after putting a question on talk for 24 hours about the quote, removes quote. Editor #2 restores it, and battle continues with arguably both users actively ignoring discussion on talk page and providing false and misleading information in the discussion. Both main editors pushed to 3RR limit, so a third opinion on the matter would be useful. 15:47, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Bektashi first editor added a new section to discuss the legacy of Bektashi as a humor character in Turkish culture, including two sample jokes. The second editor deleted the jokes with the accusation of racism. The first editor insists on including the jokes arguing that it is an important aspect of Bektashi culture, while the second editor claims there is no place for a joke in an article about religion. First editor believes culture is an important aspect of religion, being indispensable for Bektashi tradition. 22:23, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Independent State of Croatia This article is part of "History of Croatia" series and first editor argues that it should be removed from the series and that new article "Croatia during WWII" should be created, which would equaly treat both Independent State of Croatia and Federal State of Croatia, a state proclaimed by anti-fascists and which envolved to todays Croatia. The second disagrees and denies any state other than Independent State of Croatia existed at the time on Croatian soil. See Talk:Independent_State_of_Croatia#Splitting_of_this_article 16:42, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
  • RealPlayer There is a dispute in the Criticism section. 18:21, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Spyware There is a dispute in the external links section, detailed in Talk. Another opinion is needed. 18:26, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Traditional Catholic There is a dispute over the meaning of the term, with a group reverting the page back to one like the 2003 version over a dispute. Caused two page protections over reverts and several 3rr and sockpuppet allegations. 15:12, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
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