Wikipedia:Third opinion

"WP:3" redirects here. For You may be looking for Wikipedia:Trifecta, Wikipedia:Triple Crown or Wikipedia:Three-revert rule, see WP:3 (disambiguation).

Third opinion is a means to request an outside opinion in a dispute between two editors. When two editors do not agree, either editor may list a discussion here to seek a third opinion. The third opinion process requires observance of good faith and civility from both editors during the discussion in order to be successful.

The less formal nature of the third opinion process is a major advantage over other methods of resolving disputes. For more complex disputes that involve more than two editors, or that cannot be resolved through talk page discussion, editors should follow the other steps in the dispute resolution process such as the dispute resolution noticeboard or request for comment.

Some disputes may involve both content issues as well as issues regarding the conduct of an editor. In such cases, the third opinion request should be framed in terms of content issues, even if the conduct of an editor is also at issue. For disputes that are exclusively about an editor's conduct and are not related to a content issue, other forums may be more appropriate such as the administrators noticeboard or a request for comment on user conduct. If in doubt, post your request here at third opinion and a neutral editor will help out.

How to list a dispute

Before making a request here, be sure that the issue has been thoroughly discussed on the article talk page. 3O is only for assistance in resolving disagreements that have come to a standstill. If no agreement can be reached on the talk page and only two editors are involved, follow the directions below to list the dispute.

If more than two editors are involved, 3O is not appropriate. Please follow other methods in the dispute resolution process such as the dispute resolution noticeboard or request for comment. Further guidance is available in Third Opinion frequently asked questions.

No discussion of the issue should take place here – this page is only for listing the dispute. Please confine discussion to the talk page where the dispute is taking place. You may place the {{3O}} template on that page at the top of the section where the discussion of the issue has occurred, or wherever it seems appropriate to best help the Third Opinion editor understand the issue.

Follow these instructions to make your post:

• Begin a new entry in the Active Disagreements section. Your entry should be at the end of the list if there are other entries, and the first character should be a # symbol to create a numbered list. This preserves the numbering and chronological order of the list.
• Your entry should contain the following:
  • a section link to a section on the article's talk page dedicated to the 3O discussion
  • a brief neutral description of the dispute – no more than a line or two, and without trying to argue for or against either side
  • A five tilde signature (~~~~~) to add the date without your name.
• Take care (as much as possible) to make it seem as though the request is being added by both participants.

Requests are subject to being removed from the list if no volunteer chooses to provide an opinion within six days after they are listed below. If your dispute is removed for that reason (check the history to see the reason), please feel free to re-list your dispute if you still would like to obtain an opinion.

Active disagreements

After reading the above instructions, add your dispute here. If you provide a third opinion, please remove the entry from this list.

Example entry

# [[Talk:List of Cuban Americans#List Clean-up]]. Disagreement about notability of names added to list. ~~~~~

1. Talk:Kirsten Gillibrand#Proposed revision of lead. Disagreement on whether or not to keep current article lead which is longer, or change to proposed one which is shorter. 00:15, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
2. Talk:Pavle_Đurišić#Muslim_and_Albanian_irregulars. Disagreement on whether or not this work supports the claim "it was the Italians that burned villages, executed people and interned people". (p.75 and 76)10:57, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
3. Talk:Market_economy#Social_market_economy. Does Social market economy refer to a) the vague theoretical concept or b) the implemented framework of the german capitalist system or c) to both. --Pass3456 (talk) 20:48, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
4. Talk:Windows 8#System requirements source. 12:04, 30 September 2012 (UTC)
5. Talk:Revolution (TV series) Main Character Attepts at a resolution arnt working. In fact all that seems to be happpening is two users are at loggerheads over the order of characters in Revolution (TV series) and they keep undoing the same edit and one user is even undoing the same edit from a 3rd party who came down on the other side. One user even decleared the intent to keep reverting the edit. 18:33, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

1. Talk:Frederica of Hanover#vandalism I explained why I was inserting a neutrality warning, and suggested, in light-hearted fashion that the article needs to be reworked by someone who is not a member of the former Greek royal family. I was accused by making an 'ad hominum' attack on the members of the Greek royal family, and asked to delete the reference. My explanation was that it was not an attack to suggest that those closely related to the subject of an article in relation to controversial events might be unobjective, however the editor has deleted the relevant clause. This means that his/her accusation of impropriety on my part stands, but the disputed section is removed, so no-one with a better understanding of what constitutes a 'personal attack' can form a judgement. 20:56, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Providing third opinions

• Third opinions must be neutral. If you have had dealings with the article or with the editors involved in the dispute that would bias your response, do not offer a third opinion on that dispute.
• Read the arguments of the disputants.
• Do not provide opinions recklessly. Remember that Wikipedia works by consensus, not a vote. In some cases both sides may have presented valid arguments, or you may disagree with both. Provide the reasoning behind your argument.
• Provide third opinions in the relevant section of the disputed article talk pages following the discussion of the dispute. Sign your comments with four tildes, like so: ~~~~.
• The {{3OR}} template is handy for inserting a third opinion on the talk page. For a shorter alternative, {{3ORshort}} can also be used. Usage: {{subst:3OR | <your response> }} or {{subst:3ORshort | <your response> }}.
• Write your opinion in a civil and nonjudgmental way.
• Consider keeping pages on which you have given a third opinion on your watchlist for a few days. Often, articles listed here are watched by very few people.
• If it's not clear what the dispute is, put {{subst:third opinion|your_username}} on the talk page of the article.
• For third opinion requests that do not follow the instructions above, it is possible to alert the requesting party to that fact by employing {{uw-3o}}.
• When providing a third opinion, please remove the listing from this page before you provide your third opinion. Doing so prevents other volunteers from duplicating your effort. Mention in the summary which dispute you have removed and how many remain.
• If a {{3O}} tag is located in the relevant section of the article's talk page, remove this tag (but do not remove tags in other sections unrelated to the dispute for which you have offered an opinion).
• Check the list of tagged talk pages occasionally for disputes which have been tagged but not listed here.

Respondents appreciate feedback about the outcome of the dispute, either on the article's talk page or on their own talk page. We want to know whether the outcome was positive or not, helping us to maintain and improve the standards of our work. If a respondant's third opinion was especially helpful or wise, you might want to consider awarding {{The Third Opinion Award}} on their user talk page.

If you support this project you may wish to add the {{User Third opinion}} userbox to your user page.

Active contributors who watchlist the page, review disputes, and update the list of active disagreements with informative edit summaries, are welcome to add themselves to the Category:Wikipedians willing to provide third opinions.

Declining requests for third opinions

If you remove a dispute from the list for any reason, it is good practice to also leave a message on the dispute talk page explaining what you have done. The message should:

• Be civil and assume the request was made in good faith.
• Explain why the request was declined (e.g. "There are too many people involved already.")
• Suggest alternatives (e.g. "Perhaps you should try WP:Requests for Comment, the dispute resolution noticeboard, the talk page of a Wikiproject or one of the other WP:Dispute resolution options.")