Wikipedia:Third opinion
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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 an outside opinion in a dispute between two editors. When two editors cannot agree, either editor may list a dispute here to seek a third opinion. The third opinion process requires good faith and civility on both sides of the dispute.
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.
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 and this helps us to maintain and improve the standards of our work.
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: |
| # [[Talk:Style guide#"Descriptive" style guides]]. Disagreement about the existence of nonprescriptive [[style guide]]s. ~~~~~ |
| This will be displayed as: |
| 1. Talk:Style guide#"Descriptive" style guides. Disagreement about existence of the nonprescriptive style guides. 17:54, 27 October 2004 (UTC) |
Active disagreements
- UFO Watchdog used to criticize pro paranormal people, investigators, NOT skeptics. Philp Klass is criticized by UFO Watchdog, site is ufowatchdog.com, list is "Hall of Shame 1, 7th on that list". I and others have placed this on the Philip Klass article, only this is removed, while it remains on articles such as the Linda Howe article, the Richard C. Hoagland article, implying that the former is a con-woman, the latter as being some kind of nut. Someone could see this, and use it AS evidence to state that Wikipedia is "pro skeptic" and even place reports on other sites, such as Jeff Rense's site to that effect. That could further damage Wikipedia's reputation. What is your recomendation ? 21:43, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Providing third opinions
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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: ~~~~.
- Write your opinion in a civil and nonjudgemental 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.
- 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}}.