Wikipedia:Requests for comment

Part of Wikipedia:Dispute resolution

Ultimately, the content of Wikipedia is determined by making progress toward a community consensus. However, the size of Wikipedia prevents community members from actively following every development. As a result, sometimes it's useful to request broader opinions from the rest of the community.

This page is a way that anyone can request other wiki-ists to help them resolve difficulties and disputes in articles or talk pages. Anyone may visit any of these articles, to help them reach agreement. A good quality RFC can help contributors resolve differences, add different insights, give comments and opinions how others might see some wording, and so on.

It will help the RFC process if everyone who lists something on this page tries to help out at least one other page listed here.

Overview

When to use RFC

• RFC is appropriate when you want other wiki-ists to visit the page, to allow a consensus or a better quality of decision, to help resolve a dispute or break a deadlock.
• If you simply want peer review of an article, then list it at Wikipedia:Peer review.
• If the dispute involves allegations that a user has engaged in serious violations of Wikipedia policies and guidelines, create a subpage for the dispute. Use the subpage to elaborate on the allegations.

How to use RFC

• To request other users to comment on an issue, add a link to the Talk page for the article, a brief neutral statement of the issue, and the date.
• Don't sign it, don't list the details, and don't submit arguments or assign blame.
• On the Talk page of the article, it can help to summarize the dispute.

General hints for dispute resolution

• Whatever the nature of the dispute, the first resort should always be to discuss the problem with the other user. Try to resolve the dispute on your own first.
• For disputes over user conduct, before requesting community comment, at least two people should have contacted the user on their talk page, or the talk pages involved in the dispute, and failed to resolve the problem.
• Don't forget to follow Wikiquette. Wikiquette is more important in resolving a dispute, not less.

Article content disputes

Please only list links to talk pages where two or more participants cannot reach consensus and are thus stalling progress on the article. Discussions with no new comments in over two weeks old may have dried up, in which case please talk to the people involved to determine whether the problem was resolved.

Items listed on this page may be removed if you fail to try basic methods of dispute resolution.

List newer entries on top — do not sign entries.

• Talk:Estimates of the Palestinian Refugee flight of 1948: 472,000 is not estimate
• Talk:Polygamy#2Wives.com: Should the article on polygamy contain a link to a site with personal ads "for people looking to meet single women seeking polygamy"?
• President of the Palestinian Authority: Should the title of the article use "President" or "Ra'ees" (or perhaps "Chairman")? 19:52, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Israel: Should the second sentence read "It has a parliamentary system ..." or "It is a parliamentary democracy ..."?
• Talk:Hearing impairment. On the placement of Deaf and Deafness in relation to Hearing impairment or the "Deaf" culture.
• Talk:Open gaming. Two users disagree on the content of the article. One user thinks that a certain passage is necessary, factual, and relevant to the article. Another user thinks the disputed passage is irrelevant and highly POV. Attempts at rational discussion between the two parties have not been fruitful. It is hoped that a community consensus would aid in resolving the dispute.
• Talk:Natural monopoly. One editor and one admin seem to be exerting an untoward amount of control over the article, including the admin unprotecting an article which was protected because of back-and-forth reverting in which he was involved. Dispute resolution in the talk page is stalled, with the controlling faction apparently under the belief that WP:NPA doesn't apply to them.

Page was protected (by a different admin) to stop a revert war over one user insisting on the insertion of a badly-written paragraph with very little relevant content. User was not amenable to reasonable argument (which along with said editor's ignorance of a well-defined economic term incidentally led to the WP:NPA issues). So rather than leave the page protected indefinitely, the admin who had been involved in editing unprotected the page. The disputed paragraph (now grown even more unwieldy) has been allowed to stand, so what exactly is the issue here?? Yes, the article is still a mess, which is why I posted it on WP:PR. Rd232 08:36, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Post-invasion Iraq, 2003-2005. The article on Occupation of Iraq has been renamed Post-invasion Iraq, 2003-2005. See the Talk page.
• Talk:Polish-Soviet_War A POV notice. RfC suggested, as there is still no consensus. Thank you for your comments.
• Talk:2003 Invasion of Iraq Is it POV to refer to the Saddam Hussein government as a "regime"?
  • It's not just Saddam; we should consider use of the word in general, a subject raised at Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view#"Regime".
• Talk:Intelligent design Two users have requested dispute resolution. One claims the page to be a "bad faith fraud." POV concerns, much reverting going on.
• Talk: Mestizo. Validity of statistics.
• Talk:Joshua A. Norton. Is referring to this gentleman as "Emperor of the United States" throughout his article misleading or appropriate? Is humorously referring to a faux emperor's reign, decrees, etc. misleading and contrary to the facts?
• Lyndon LaRouche, Political views of Lyndon LaRouche (currently protected) and Schiller Institute. Help needed to make these pages NPOV.
• Talk:Christian views of homosexuality - an extensive essay about the Eastern Orthodox views of sin and sexuality in general evades touching the subject of the actual Eastern Orthodox views of homosexuality.
• Talk:Perverted-Justice.com - dispute between two article versions.
• Talk:Elton John: should the article use hyphens instead of dashes?
• Talk:QuakeAID - is it a violation of the NPOV policy for the article to state that QuakeAID "fraudulently misrepresents themselves"?
• Talk:Global warming - Continuous complaints from new users about quality and readability of article and related articles. Continuous fighting on talk pages of all articles involved between self-proclaimed expert user acting as "owner" of the pages and new users wanting to contribute.
• Talk:Political views of Lyndon LaRouche - Neutrality dispute.
• Talk:Free-content#Bloating_of_the_article – Regarding the bloating of the article.
• Talk:Male circumcision - POV dispute.
• Talk:Republican Party (United States) and [[Talk:Democratic Party (United States) - A variety of controversial changes: Should articles repeatedly blame slavery on the Democratic Party? Should information about the history of the Republican Party be remove? etc.
• Talk:Tsunami Should there be a pronouciation guide for 'tsunami', and what form should it take?
• Category talk:Languages of Wikipedia Projects - Should the content of this category be changed from articles about languages to articles about wikipedia projects in that language? No real dispute, I'm listing this here because "category talk:" usually does not get much attention.
• Talk:International Socialists (Canada) - should the article include critical opinions of the IS?
• Talk:Little_Green_Footballs - Dispute over the inclusion and placement of a paragraph in the article text that specifically directs readers to a single external link containing highly critical comments about the article subject. Dispute seems to have waged for quite some time, all surrounding a single frequent editor of this article. Said editor has also begun attacking other editors in the discussion forum for additions made on completely unrelated articles elsewhere on wikipedia.
• Talk:Macedonian Slavs - Should we cite a population estimate that some people disagree with?
• Talk:Chess#Vote - Should we include a paragraph talking about computer chess events as being "Publicity stunts".
• Talk:Therianthropy - attempts to insert POV material
• Talk:Norway Scholarship - should the holders of the scholarship be listed?
• Talk:Polymath and Talk:List of polymaths-Disagreement wether Ken Jennings should be listed as a polymath
• Talk:Chip Berlet - The individual about whom the article is written, who is a journalist, has become a Wikipedia editor, and complained that the article was overly critical. The talk page is somewhat overly partisan on this issue, and neutral participants might help put things in perspective. The page was recently rewritten in an effort to make it more NPOV. Which version is more neutral? The new one from January 8 [1] or the old one from January 2 [2]?
• Talk:Sollog - an argument between critics and supporters of Sollog (members of the Temple of 'Hayah, accused of being Sollog's sock-puppets), mostly about the accuracy of quake predictions and the NPOV
• Talk:Main page; should there be a 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake donation box on the front page?
• Talk:Joe Scarborough; should death of an aide be mentioned in his article
• Talk:List of Palestinian children killed by Israelis in 2004 - What should have been a plain list of names has suddenly turned into a full-out edit war with proselytizing that will end up as long as the list. Also, note that the article is to be transwikied.
• Talk:List of Quebec television series - The question has been raised whether List of Quebec television series should be merged into List of Canadian television series; the consensus was to keep them split, but one user insists on merging them.
• Talk:Frankfurt School - Should Kevin B. MacDonald be listed as a "notable critic" of the Frankfurt School in the absence of any evidence of his being cited or regarded as such?
• Talk:Main_Page/intro - New Main Page introduction text. Vote or comment.
• Talk:Abraham Lincoln - Should the section on Lincoln's sexuality be removed from the main page?
• Talk:Chess - Where did the game of Chess originate?
• Talk:Great Game or Talk:The Great Game - should the title of this article be Great Game or The Great Game?
• Talk:Laser - dispute over removals of incomprehensible convoluted sentences and mention of uncorroborated theory of "liquid light".
• Talk:List_of_music_videos_by_year Should the article be split imediately into the yearly lists or not until it's finished? The issue was voted on, and the clear majority agreed to split it. Still, an anonymous user reverts the page, when some videos are moved to yearly lists.
• Talk:Patricia Heaton - Article is being reverted beyond the 3RR by all parties (one side being anon) between an attempted rewritten version and another which a user has claimed to have withdrawn their permission for after a previous dispute.
• Talk:2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities - This page has grown to nearly 130KB. What would be the best way to reduce the size while maintaining news and sources?
• Talk:Charles Darwin/Lincoln There is an ongoing dispute about the inclusion of a ten word sentence about Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin sharing a birthday. What would the best resolution of this dispute be?
• Talk:Bash.org - Does the fork of bash called "QDB.us" deserve mention in the article? What about open source clone "Rash QMS"?
• Talk:Free market#Trying to avoid a formal dispute - are there "free or ideal markets" in the underground economy?
• Talk:Kenneth Bigley#Providing links to the video - Should articles about the hostages in Iraq who have been beheaded include links to the videos showing their deaths?
• Talk:Historicity of Jesus. Dispute over whether the section entitled "The Pauline Epistles" is relevant to the Historicity of Jesus.
• Talk:Tucson, Arizona - An RfC success story: A vote was held between two versions that differ on where the indigenous name for the city should be, twenty-two votes were cast, and one version prevailed. Thanks to everyone who voted. You can still come by to edit or propose something new. (This RfC item is now concluded and ready for archiving.)
• Talk:Empire of Atlantium - Discussion concerning the wording of a single sentence.
• Talk:List of words having different meanings in British and American English#Syrup - Discussion surrounding 'syrup'
• Talk:Red Ensign - should the article mention the use of the Canadian red ensign by neo-nazi groups?
• Talk:Comparison of web browsers - lack of consensus regarding data presentation and color coding
• Talk:Autobiography (album) - should this album article go into some detail and some of its content moved into singles articles when it grows too large, or should it simply be a brief summary without any breakout articles?
• Talk:Vojvodina#Disputed - One of the most multinational region's of Europe needs some input, so that its turbulent history can be described in an accurate and neutral way, instead from the exclusive point of view of one group of inhabitants.

Article dispute archive

Comment about individual users

This section is for discussing specific users who have allegedly violated Wikipedia policies and guidelines. In order to request comment about a user, please follow the instructions to create a subpage in the appropriate section below. Disputes over the writing of articles, including disputes over how best to follow the NPOV policy, belong in the Article content disputes section above.

Before listing any user conduct dispute here, at least two people should have tried to resolve the same issue by discussing it with the subject on his or her talk page or the talk pages involved in the dispute. This must involve the same dispute or concern the same disputed type(s) of activity, not different ones.

Once the request for comment is open, these two people must document their individual efforts, provide evidence that those efforts have failed to produce change, and sign the comment page. Requests for comment which do not meet these minimum requirements after 48 hours from creation are considered "uncertified" and will be de-listed. The subject RFC page will also be deleted, unless the subject has explicitly requested it to be retained.

General user conduct

Discussions about user conduct should be listed in this section unless the complaint is specifically about the use of admin privileges or the choice of username. To list a user conduct dispute, please create a subpage using the following sample listing as a template (anything within {...} are notes):

• /Example user - Allegations: {one or two short sentences giving the dry facts; do not sign entry.}

Candidate pages - still need to meet the two person threshold
List newer entries on top

Approved pages - have met the two person threshold
List newer entries on top

• /William M. Connolley - Allegations: POV editing, disrespect toward other contributers, lack of civility, poor wikiquette, and engaging in chronic and sustained RV edit wars.
• /Iasson - Allegations: Disruption of VfD by casting peculiar votes.
• /Silsor - Allegations: Robbed Wikipedia:WikiMoney accounts.
• /Invalid user name specified - Allegations: Disruptive username, improper accusations of vandalism, disruptive talk page behavior.
• /Chan Han Xiang - This user ignores the WP community. Practically: re-create pages after they have been vfd'ed.
• /Robert the Bruce -- refusal to discuss changes, pushing non-NPOV on various pages. Problems with a variety of users.
• /Cheung1303 Allegations: Persistent uploading of images that violate copyrights, failure to provide source information for images, attempts to defeat process for removal of images

Use of administrator privileges

This section is only for discussions specifically related to the use of sysop rights by Wikipedia:Administrators. This includes the actions of protecting or unprotecting pages, deleting or undeleting pages, and blocking or unblocking users. If the dispute is over an admin's actions as an editor, it should be listed under the General user conduct section above. To list a dispute, create a subpage using the following sample as a template:

• /Example admin - Allegations: {one or two short sentences giving the dry facts; do not sign entry.}

As with disputes over general user conduct, at least two people must certify that they believe there is a legitimate basis for the complaint. If the listing is not certified within 48 hours of listing, it will be deleted.

Candidate pages - still need to meet the two person threshold
List newer entries on top

Approved pages - have met the two person threshold

Choice of username

If you believe someone has chosen an inappropriate username under Wikipedia's username policy, you may create a subpage here to discuss whether the user should be forced to change usernames. However, before listing the user here, please first contact the user on his or her talk page and give them an opportunity to change usernames voluntarily.

New listings here, please

• /Joe Scarborough - user is obviously not the well-known talk show host and ex-congressman
• /Scott Peterson - Alleges that he is the convicted murder and former fertilizer salesman.
• /Anilingus - Offensive username

User dispute archive

General convention and policy issues

Some proposed conventions and policies can be found at Category:Wikipedia policy thinktank.

List newer entries on top

• Wikipedia talk:Edit summary. Edit summary is now required. How do we inform editors? See also Template talk:Edit summary. Hyacinth 04:57, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Wikipedia talk:Proposal to expand WP:CSD#Protection of the proposal page and Wikipedia talk:Proposal to expand WP:CSD#Netoholic's addition - dispute over expanding Wikipedia:Proposal to expand WP:CSD
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (government departments and ministers) - Putting out feelers on a naming convention for subunits of governments around the world.
• Wikipedia talk:Proposal to expand WP:CSD/General talk - disagreement about whether the Wikipedia:Proposal to expand WP:CSD should be postponed
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Drugs/General/Naming of drug pages - The question is whether All drug pages should be named according to their International Nonproprietary Name
• Wikipedia:Ethics and law - I'd like to encourage ideas about possible guidelines or principles for questions of privacy and related issues.
• User_talk:Ram-Man#Spambot - Should rambot be permitted to send messages regarding dual-licensing of contributions to thousands of user talk pages?
• Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment#Deleting_uncertified_RFCs - Should the manner of handling uncertified RFCs be altered?
• Wikipedia:Disabling edits by unregistered users and stricter registration requirement
• Wikipedia talk:Arbitration policy/Proposed amendment ratification vote - Should the "Snowspinner Amendment" be removed and subjected to a separate vote?
• A complaint about abuse of speedy deletion
• Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(jguk's_changes) The disagreements concern:

1. The quote at the beginning of style guide.
2. Fowler's "good" guidelines.
3. The expressions "period" and "full stop."
4. The serial comma.
5. "U.S."

• Wikipedia:Divulging personal details - Discussion of when to include personal details of people who have chosen to remain anonymous.
• Wikipedia_talk:Avoid_weasel_terms should we use weasel words?
• Wikipedia talk:Protection policy - Should we implement a software change so that pages in the user namespace are only editable by that particular user?
• Wikipedia:Preliminary Deletion - Not sure if this is the place, but comments on this proposal to add another type of deletion would be appreciated.
• Wikipedia talk:Cleanup/Leftovers#Leftovers_system - Not a dispute, but I would like more opinions from people in a discussion on a somewhat backwater talk page.
• Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion phrases: content created by User:132.205.15.42, as a jump-start to a discussion (this goes hand in hand with a rewrite of the content of the {{cfd}} template).
• Proposed new VfD rule: No repeat submission of articles that have already passed the VfD process (w/ consensus to keep) within the next three months.
• Wikipedia:Categorization of people - 2nd version of integrated content.

Resolved convention disputes