Wikipedia:Third opinion

This page is not an official policy or a guideline. It is a non-binding informal process through which editors who are currently in content disputes can request assistance from those involved with this project.

Third opinion is a means to request a third-party mediator in the event of a dispute. When editors cannot reach a compromise and need a third opinion, they may list a dispute here. The third opinion process requires good faith and civility on both sides of the dispute.

Respondents appreciate feedback about the outcome of the dispute, either on the article's talk page or on their own talk page. We what to know whether the outcome was positive or not and this helps us to maintain and improve the standards of our work.

This page is primarily for informally resolving disputes involving only two editors. If any more complex dispute cannot be resolved through talk page discussion, you can follow the other steps in the dispute resolution process. The informal nature of the third opinion process is its chief advantage over more formal methods of resolving disputes.

If you provide third opinions, you are encouraged to add the Category:Third opinion Wikipedians (with the option of a {{User Third opinion}} userbox) to your user page.

How to list a dispute

Be sure to discuss the dispute on the talk page as the first step in the process before making a request here. Follow these instructions to make your post:

• If, after discussion, only two editors are involved, you may list the dispute below in the Active Disagreements section. Otherwise, please follow other methods in the dispute resolution process.
• Provide a concise and neutral description of the disagreement, with a wikilink to the article's talk page. Including the most significant diffs may be helpful, too.
• Use a section link to the specific section that contains the dispute.
• Sign with five tildes (~~~~~) to add the date without your name. This is important to maintain neutrality.
• No discussion on this page. Confine the discussion to the relevant talk pages.
• To preserve formatting, start your entry with a number sign/hash directly below the last entry and avoid any excessive cosmetic formatting.

An example entry before wiki-formatting:

# [[Wikipedia talk:Third opinion#Putting sample requests in the page?|Third opinion]]: Should more example entries be provided with the instructions to assist editors? [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3AThird_opinion&diff.......] ~~~~~

This will be displayed as:

1. Third opinion: Should more example entries be provided with the instructions to assist editors? [1] 18:34, 6 August 2007 (UTC) (UTC)

Active disagreements

After reading the above instructions, add your dispute here.

1. Talk:Loudness war#External link to research page: Should an external link or citation be added to the Loudness war article? 16:20, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
2. Talk:Marco Polo#Origin Debate: A dispute over the origin of Marco Polo and the approach to displaying that information. 16:26, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
3. Talk:Religious discrimination against Asatru#notability?: debate over the subject satisfy the notability guideline. 08:22, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
4. Talk:German_Shepherd_Dog#infobox_image a dispute over the infobox image on German Shepherd Dog 02:05, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
5. Talk:Yakiniku: should the fact that in English, this dish is often (not entirely accurately) referred to as "Korean BBQ", be mentioned in the article? 16:14, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Providing third opinions

• Provide third opinions on the disputed article talk pages, not on this page. Sign your comments on the associated talk page as normal, with four tildes, like so: ~~~~.
• Read the arguments of the disputants.
• Do not provide third opinions recklessly. In some cases your opinion is a tie-breaker, while in others both sides may have presented valid arguments, or you may disagree with both.
• Write your opinion in a civil and nonjudgemental way.
• Third opinions must be neutral. If you have previously had dealings with the article or with the editors involved in the dispute which would bias your response, do not offer a third opinion on that dispute.
• 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.
• When providing a third opinion, remove the listing from this page and mention in the summary which dispute you have removed and how many remain. This is best done before responding so that other editors are unlikely to respond at the same time as you and duplicate your effort unnecessarily.
• 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}}.