Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view

Theological sources in the articles about history

I would like to understand what the policy says about theological sources (Biblical study sources) that describe, for example, the events that happened, or allegedly happened in I - II AD in East Mediterranean. There are tons of sources authored by scholars who have a degree in theology about Christ and similar topics, and the number of works authored by the scholars who see the same events from secular perspective is much smaller. Should the POV of theologists be considered a mainstream just based on the fact that their works are historically more numerous?--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:04, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

The Bible and its Old Testament are a blend of history, folklore, beliefs, etc. A lot of the historical material is accurate and confirmed by other methods, so those bits are fair game. -- BullRangifer (talk) 04:32, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

The study of Christian origins/the ancient Israelites is not "theology", it is part of Religious studies, archaeology and history. "Theologians" do not work in these fields, although people with degrees in theology/divinity sometimes do, and some of them do teach at divinity schools/seminaries. To call them theologians misrepresents what they are, and is an ad hominem attack on their research.

To elaborate: we say at The Exodus that scholarly consensus is that it didn't happen as in the bible. This is the consensus among historians and archeologists, "theologians" have no say in the matter, although many of these same archaeologists and historians teach at divinity schools or may even be religious Jews and Christians. At Historicity of Jesus, we say that the view that Jesus did not exist is a fringe view, because the overwhelming consensus among historians is that Jesus existed. Again, this has nothing to do with theology or Christian belief. Paul, on the other hand, assumes that this scholarly consensus is false, allegedly because the scholarly consensus is among Christians. He has yet to provide any evidence of "secular" scholars who disagree, however, besides a few fringe figures like Richard Carrier, and is currently making the same baseless argument at Tacitus on Christ.--Ermenrich (talk) 16:32, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

First of all, I would be grateful if you stopped putting your words in my mouth. I am pretty capable of explaining what I think by myself.

Second, I am not discussing historicity of Jesus. My question is more general. It seems logical to expect that majority of sources that are directly or indirectly associated with some religious organisations, schools, or specialised religious institutions of higher education resemble, in some aspects, the research groups that conduct climate change studies sponsored by, e.g. Exxon Mobil. In other words, we can speak about some conflict of interest. Obviously, many biblical scholars are affected by religious doctrine, and, although some of them may be atheists or agnostics, the presence of a large amount of religious scholarships influenced by a religious doctrines creates a significant bias. And I am thinking about possible ways to compensate for that bias.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:22, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

It's fairly clear what agenda you are following by doing so - how can anyone have this discussion without concrete examples? You continue to dismiss out of hand people you identify as "theologians" (which is incorrect) or Christians (which is absurd) without any evidence that this has any affect on their scholarship. The only other places you have made these arguments have been in attempts to deny the historicity of Jesus or else, most recently, to deny that Tacitus has anything to say about it because the scholars saying he does are "biased". You have provided no evidence that mainstream scholars who happen to be Christian have reached conslusions any different than anyone else's. Ask anyone who edits in this area: scholars following a non-mainstream, fundamentalist view are regularly removed from Wikipedia. There is no problem on Wikipedia with the POV of theologists be considered a mainstream just based on the fact that their works are historically more numerous. This is just your own POV.--Ermenrich (talk) 00:53, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

I am not sure speaking about your opponent's "agenda" is totally civil. My original post was inspired by this exchange. Obviously, my first post in that thread is a generalisation of that problem. Indeed, if we have a topic that is a core topic for theologians, so 100 authors with PhD in theology (50% of whom are devoted Christians) wrote 1 article each, and, at the same time, this topic is only marginally important to secular historians, so only 5 authors have written articles on that account, then, if we will treat all sources as having equal weight, then the opinion of non-theologians (the authors like Russel or Dawkins) becomes dramatically diluted by the works of theologians (both religious and agnostics). I want to know how our policy deals with that.

This question is general, and it has no relationship to our old dispute. Please, do not bring the dispute about some narrow topic to this general discussion.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:34, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Paul Siebert, I suspect you might be misusing the term "theological sources" - theologians discuss God, not history. Can you give us some examples of sources you might mean?Achar Sva (talk) 00:29, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

RfC on quotation templates with giant quotation marks and other decoration

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#RfC: Use of Large Quotes in article space, and the Cquote template.

This did not open with a particular focus on NPoV concerns, but has turned that way (in short, whether colorful/flashy quotation templates pose a WP:UNDUE problem, or are simply a harmless layout choice like colored backgrounds in infoboxes).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:20, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

• It Depends - certainly styling COULD be used in a non-neutral way. For example, if quotes illustrating a particular viewpoint are styled with the large quote marks, while those illustrating other views are styled in a different (less noticeable) format, that would be non-neutral... However, that would only happen if the article used multiple format styles (unlikely).

That said... I could see an argument that the act of quoting (itself) might give a particular viewpoint or statement UNDUE weight. It is possible that the view or fact is not significant enough to quote... but if so, the FORMAT used to present that quote does not matter. It would be UNDUE to quote it regardless of the format used. Blueboar (talk) 01:16, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

American economy and foreign affairs

{{Request Edit}}

This article is a disgrace to the recording of American History! Full of bias opinions and untruths, the contradictory statements are appalling for an article of this importance! This is a disservice to scholars, youth and Adult alike, who are trying to learn about the administration’s policies and such. This Article is not an Objective view of the state of The current American economy and foreign Affairs, it is a slanderous piece of propaganda! — Preceding unsigned comment added by CorrineNye (talk • contribs) 21:56, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

@CorrineNye: You appear to be on the wrong page. --Izno (talk) 22:29, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

No

Davesmith38 (talk) 00:31, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Wikimedia Project Grant Proposal on *Disinformation*

I'm proposing a Wikimedia Foundation Project Grant to study *disinformation* and provide actionable insights and recommendations.

Please check it out and endorse it if you support it.

Meta:Grants:Project/Misinformation_And_Its_Discontents:_Narrative_Recommendations_on_Wikipedia's_Vulnerabilities_and_Resilience

Cheers! -Jake Ocaasi ^{t | c20:14, 19 February 2020 (UTC)}

The Balance of Wikipedia

As we know,the balance principle is one of the important ways to realize the neutral point of view.Why not set up "WP:Balance"to introduce the details about the balance.The balance principles in wikipedia policy can be divided into the text balance principles, the image balance principles and the external link balance principles according to the elements of the articles. Among them, the text balance principles can be subdivided into the text length balance, the text detail balance and the text source balance; The image balance principles can be subdivided into the image quantity balance, the image position balance and the image size balance; The external link balance principles can be subdivided into the external link quantity balance, the external link site balance and the external link language background balance. Through the further analysis of these balance principles, there are two kinds of connotation of balance. One is the balance of proportion consistent and the other one is the balance of proportion inconsistent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tiffany-WBT (talk • contribs) 03:14, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Clarifying NPOV's application to questions of reputation

There's currently a debate raging at (where else?) Adolf Hitler over whether it's appropriate to mention in the lede that he's widely considered evil. In my view, this policy as it stands clearly permits such a mention ("Usually, articles will contain information about the significant opinions that have been expressed about their subjects.") and many less experienced editors are just poorly informed, so I'm not interested in hashing out that debate here (comments on that should go on Hitler's page; good luck to anyone trying seriously to engage). However, I did want to bring it up, as it's not the first time I've encountered confusion over whether or not it's appropriate to describe an entity's reputation in its article. This applies not just to Hitler, but also to things like a college's academic reputation or a movie's reputation with critics. We provide explicit guidance on the latter here with the WP:AESTHETIC section, which states "it is appropriate to note how an artist or a work has been received by prominent experts and the general public", but nothing on the topic more generally. Would you all be in favor of potentially adding some brief language to make this clearer? If so, what form would you want it to take? Draft proposals welcome. Sdkb (talk) 02:29, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

You're right. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:23, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

IMO Being a slam dunk situation like Hitler is a bad example and could lead to a bad policy. You need a much more borderline case as an example if you want to make good policy. All too often I see people trying to Wiki-lawyer in positive or negative characterizations which have no information content or encyclopedic value. I think that any change that would tend to increase that problem would not be good. In general, some good wording would say that content should have useful information and that material which simply deprecates or elevates the person/organization without providing useful information should be avoided. Or that only overwhelmingly accepted characterizations should be included if in the voice in Wikipedia. BTW, IMO talking about an artist / artistic work / academic work / academic's scope of reception IS informative. That does not mean that every characterization of anything should be treated the same.North8000 (talk) 11:26, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

I hesitate to use a more borderline example, since those tend to get bogged down debating the specifics of that example. But if you want an example of a less lopsided contentious debate, the ones a few years ago about how to characterize Harvard's reputation might suffice. And I agree that we don't want to encourage non-informative characterizations — the word I used above was "permits", which to my mind means "it's allowed so long as it doesn't violate any other policy (including policies that require information to be useful)", not "you always get to include it no matter what". Sdkb (talk) 02:08, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@BullRangifer and North8000: Okay, throwing out a sentence here: It is sometimes permissible to note an article subject's reputation when that reputation is widespread and informative to readers. Does that sound like something we could include in a potential broadened aesthetics section? Sdkb (talk) 20:59, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. North8000 (talk) 16:36, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Okay, I'll try adding it and see if it sticks. Sdkb (talk) 17:49, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Impartial

I have a problem with WP:IMPARTIAL: it suggests to some editors that we are not entitled to label quackery as quackery. Wikipedia does side with mainstream science. Wikipedia does endorse evolution, not creationism. This is long-standing practice. Of course, WP:GEVAL acknowledges this. Tgeorgescu (talk) 22:42, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't think the section implied that at all. We obviously already have the WP:GEVAL section, which states, in part, "We do not take a stand on these issues as encyclopedia writers, for or against; we merely omit this information where including it would unduly legitimize it, and otherwise include and describe these ideas in their proper context with respect to established scholarship and the beliefs of the wider world." That is what being impartial on Wikipedia means.

Anyway, as seen here, here, here and here, the WP:IMPARTIAL section now notes that we shouldn't engage in false balance. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 02:37, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

I think what we have now is problematic, specifically:

• "The tone of Wikipedia articles should be impartial, neither endorsing nor rejecting a particular point of view" <- surely we do endorse and reject particular points of view (yes, the Holocaust did happen; no, chemtrails aren't a government-sponsored programme).
• "Editors should faithfully document the biased points of view" <- but only insofar as it is documented in RS, which might not be "faithful" in the way a fringe proponent wants.

I can foresee these passages being used in support of WP:PROFRINGE editing. Alexbrn (talk) 02:46, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't ever see it as Wikipedia endorsing anything. And that's an argument I make against editors adding fringe or otherwise undue material. They will often argue that Wikipedia is taking a side and therefore being biased. The best argument against that is that Wikipedia is simply following the literature with due weight. It's not about what any individual personally believes. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 02:57, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

The more I look at WP:IMPARTIAL, the more I wonder what it's trying to do. The idea that a "tone" can endorse or reject is off, since a tone just lends colour. A tone can suggest that Wikipedia endorses or rejects an idea, and if such a suggestion is out-of-kilter with RS, it's a problem; even if it is aligned with certain brash RS, it could be a problem. Alexbrn (talk) 03:03, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

The basic foundation here is RS. If it's not stated, then it should be. We do not present arguments from unreliable sources in a manner which leaves readers in doubt about whether they are fact or fiction, because Wikipedia DOES take the side of RS. That should be stated. Our policies and content favor RS, IOW we take the side of RS and the narrative they tell us.

This also has to do with due weight. RS have due weight, and unreliable sources have no weight. (Due weight has various shades when comparing content from multiple RS, but not when comparing content from a RS vs an unreliable source.)

We should only use RS to document the false ideas advocated by unreliable sources. If those ideas are not mentioned in RS, then they don't have enough weight for any mention at all here. If they are mentioned in RS, we document the ideas in the setting, and with the tone, of the RS, IOW the mainstream scientific-friendly source's scorn for the subject. That is the proper tone. It's not Wikipedia's tone, but the tone of the RS, and per NPOV we should document that source's tone without altering it. NPOV says that "editorial neutrality" is how we should edit. We should faithfully document what the source says, including its biased tone. We love to document the proper scientific tone used toward nonsense. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:26, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

That's all fine, but if the job of WP:IMPARTIAL is just to restate other bits of policy in a different way, what is it for? As I see it, this is meant to be about specifically tone not meaning per its heading ("Impartial tone"), but the badly chosen shortcut name (it should have been WP:TONE not WP:IMPARTIAL) has meant all kinds of other stuff has got in here. "Tone" refers to word choice - so we say "Biochargers are ineffective alternative medicine devices, the promotion of which has been characterized as quackery" and not "Biochargers are too silly to take seriously" - even if a reliable source uses that tone (which it does). Alexbrn (talk) 07:54, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

When did fringe theories become fringe viewpoints? I see a lot of editors pushing that in a way not supported by the guideline or NPOV. fiveby(zero) 12:44, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

What difference does it make? Fringe viewpoints -- the belief that the Holocaust never happened, that extraterrestrial aliens landed at Roswell NM, or that white people are superior to black people -- rely on conspiracy theories or pseudoscientific theories. NightHeron (talk) 13:00, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

The difference is for pseudoscience and historical negationism etc. there is a mostly objective application of the guideline that is relatively easy for editors to implement. NPOV for such as opinion or belief, moral value judgments etc. is hard work and best handled by the core policy. Was the fringe theories guideline really meant to apply to such things a libertarianism or abortion debates? Calling something fringe should not be a tactic editors can use to try and gain easy wins in POV disputes. fiveby(zero) 13:33, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, of course the opinion that abortion is morally wrong cannot be labeled fringe on Wikipedia. However, the viewpoint or belief or theory (and I don't see that it matters which word is used) that abortion is dangerous for the woman (compared to carrying a pregnancy to term) is fringe because it is contrary to scientific evidence, and editors on the relevant pages have correctly insisted that it be treated as fringe. NightHeron (talk) 14:26, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

And those editors were clearly correct in their insistence, so let's hold on to a useful distinction that makes editing easier by applying that guideline in an objective manner. Anyway, issue resolved, lets not get in the way of discussion of tone for actual pseudoscience. fiveby(zero) 14:59, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

That section is likely to cause increased wikilawyering in support of fringe, in part because it's poorly written. It says we shouldn't "censor" the tone of the original source and then 2 sentences later contradicts that: Try not to quote directly from participants engaged in a heated dispute; instead, summarize and present the arguments in an impartial tone. Also, the word "censor" is a favorite of defenders of fringe. This might belong in an essay (rewritten with more care), but certainly not on a page documenting core policy. NightHeron (talk) 12:49, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

I especially object to the sentence Try not to quote directly from participants engaged in a heated dispute; instead, summarize and present the arguments in an impartial tone. It introduces and caters to a misunderstanding held by some editors, that we are not allowed to quote as it's a copyright violation. That's BS. Fair use allows the use of quotes, sometimes even long ones, and while we are encouraged to often paraphrase, it does not forbid the use of quotes.

Quotes are especially essential when dealing with strong or controversial statements. Paraphrasing such content easily leads to OR, SYNTH, or subtle editorial NPOV violations. In such cases, it's best to just quote and not censor or neutralize the quote. Attribute it properly and let it stand or fall on its own merits. The use of biased language from editors is not proper editorial practice, but it is proper editorial practice to document and cite biased language accurately, without getting in the way.

So, I find that sentence offensive and counterproductive. Can't we just delete it? -- BullRangifer (talk) 17:45, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

What we want to do is avoid citing primary works from those parties directly involved in dispute at least when we are talking about fringe viewpoints and subjective situations, but prefer to use their words as framed in an uninvolved reliable source, or the sound bites as selected by that reliable source. Otherwise, we'll have editors digging into primary source to source both sides. It may be necessary once in a while, but we want this only as a last resort for neutrality purposes, and that would be like the case for example of going to Twitter to get someone's defense to criticism directed at them that no RS is otherwise repoting. We don't want WP articles to spent excessive time in quotes from primary sources in these debates. I do agree we're not trying to block the use of these sources for any copyright violation reasons, but there are reasons to avoid quoting the primary sources in these debates. --Masem (t) 18:17, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Masem, that makes total sense. It is the secondary sources which tell us how much weight to give such content. We can cite primary sources for straight facts, but as soon as we get into controversial and interpretive areas, we must depend on secondary sources. Very good point. -- BullRangifer (talk) 21:23, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Masem, wise words. I am reminded of a review of the crockumentary Vaxxed: "Wakefield doesn’t just have a dog in this fight; he is the dog." Guy (help!) 00:07, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

I think WP:ASSERT does a better job at describing best practices (and usual practices) than WP:IMPARTIAL. YMMV. jps (talk) 17:26, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Maybe rewrite it, but honestly it feels to me like people are looking for a way to misread and misinterpret this, instead of just reading what it actually says. Avoid quoting primary material from disputing sides; we all know the "he said, then she said, then he said" bad-article-writing problem. If you are going to quote, don't "sculpt" the quotation selectively to change the tone of it. It's better to just summarize, in an impartial tone (in WP's voice), the way we write everything. Just because people out there in the world, including some source we are drawing on, are injecting emotive, subjective, fallacious arguments into the subject doesn't mean that we should ape them. Using an impartial tone doesn't mean giving equal weight. The tone we use for both [or more] sides should be the same; the amount of space given will differ, as will the sourcing brought to bear for refutation, etc. But that has nothing to do with the tone of the encyclopedic writing.

This isn't difficult, so I'm not sure why there's all the above difficulty about this. Something I have frequently said: Any time you think two parts of our WP:P&G material are contradicting each other, you are making a mistake. The only time your sense of there being a contradiction is actually going to be true is when someone very recently added something and it hasn't been vetted properly. When it comes to long-standing material, it's already been combed over and massaged a zillion times. You're simply not yet absorbing the community interpretation of what it means and how it relates to other material, and are instead choosing to misinterpret it in a way that leads to an apparent conflict (most often this will be through the fallacy of equivocation, swapping out the obviously intended meaning everyone gets, to inject some other meaning that a term could have had but clearly can't really have in this particular context). So, just stop. Instead, choose the interpretation that doesn't lead to such a conflict, like everyone else does.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:53, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

Problem with Final Countdown page

I wanted to remove incredibly biased content regarding Blender's listing of The Final Countdown on two "Worst Songs Ever" list. It is obviously biased and appealing to a demographic. However, the admins removed it, claiming it was "blanking" and because this policy "supports this article summarizing negative material about the song". Then why is this policy called "WP:Neutral point of view" then?

I need help with this issue. --2601:199:4181:E00:B44E:7793:DDAF:F182 (talk) 23:08, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

WP:UNDUE for less developed articles

A while back, I posted at VPP asking, to violate WP:UNDUE, does content need to be undue with regard to the current state of an article, or undue with regard to what the article is expected to become once it is fully developed, or some mixture of both? Quoting myself:

As a result of the recent North Face COI editing controversy, a lot of attention is being paid to how to describe the incident on The North Face's page. Any views specifically on that situation should be directed there, so as to keep the discussion in one place, but I want to bring one question raised by that discussion here to see about establishing a broader consensus. The North Face is a start class article, and many sections are pretty bare-bones, so as a result, any mention of the controversy in any amount of detail will take up a significant portion of the article. This has led some editors to argue that it would be WP:UNDUE. Others, however, contend that, were the article fully developed, spending a paragraph on the controversy would not take up a huge amount of space proportionally and would probably be fine, and that the article won't become more fully developed unless we allow additions, even if it temporarily leads to some unbalance. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated! (I do realize it's in some ways a proxy for the whole WP:Immediatism/WP:Eventualism debate.)

There were a few comments from Barkeep49, Nosebagbear, and Blueboar, but it wasn't a full discussion. This question has recently come up again with regard to Ed Kosner (see here), so I'd like to open the discussion again here. Can we come to some consensus on this and add appropriate guidance to the UNDUE section? Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:57, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

• By common practice, I've seen due weight judged by the article's current state, not its hypothetical finished state. Especially when writing thorough BLPs, building out the subject's origins before the other sections will overemphasize that portion. A fair compromise is to move that content to the talk page or a draft subpage until the balanced version (the hypothetically finished article) is ready for primetime. (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 21:24, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
• I think UNDUE/DUE coverage is about the current state of the article. We might not ever get to the fully realized (even B class) version of an article and so having undue coverage in there basically permanently goes against the spirit of that policy. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:39, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
• I remain much more split on this. Perhaps it comes down to my very earliest content being declined and not being able to add most of it into its parent topic because of UNDUE that I was not in a position to resolve. Partially as a devil's advocate to @Barkeep49:'s point above, it might permanently violate UNDUE, but avoiding that also risks permanently excluding reliable information from the encyclopedia, purely on the basis of other missing info. Permanently missing information worse or better than permanently disproportinate coverage? Nosebagbear (talk) 22:20, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

As a side note, I am fully in favour of this getting a broader consideration - I imagine that the issue has been considered in a broad variety of articles, and as an issue with no inherently wrong answer, is more a question of community judgement and ethos. Nosebagbear (talk)

Permanently disproportionate coverage is worse than permanently missing coverage. It gives the illusion of a more complete article than it is. I also don't think in DUE/UNDUE it's about excluding reliable information it's about excluding some verifiable information, perhaps even from reliable sources. But we choose to exclude lots of kinds of verifiable information. This is no different, in my opinion. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:36, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

• DUE/UNDUE is definitely assessed based on the “current state”. This becomes obvious when you realize that DUE/UNDUE goes beyond the question of WHETHER to cover something... it also influences HOW we cover it. A brief summary of some aspect of the topic may be DUE, while a detailed account of it may be UNDUE. This is especially true when it comes to discussing recent events... many editors make the mistake of writing a detailed account of the event rather than a brief summary. Blueboar (talk) 13:23, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
• This came up/is still being discussed at Scott Lobdell. My best effort at compromise was to summarize two paragraphs of detail into three sentences while retaining all the sources. If a reader (or editor expanding the article) wants more information, they can follow those links. This might not apply to all cases, though. Argento Surfer (talk) 13:29, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
• I find this reasoning a bit concerning. It would suggest that concision, bloating, non-extreme forms of RS refbombing (after all, we often don't include every single reliable source on a topic) etc would move a section of content on the boundary of DUE/UNDUE in and out. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:36, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Does the NPOV tag require consensus before it is put up and what do you do when someone pulls it down for lack of consensus

I'm having trouble figuring out what to do in an NPOV tag situation. There's been about a month of discussion on a US political controversial page, Deep state in the United States. There's been about a month of back and forth on the topic with me (and others) putting up material and getting it reverted. I know, I know, par for the course in a lot of circumstances but here's the thing. The controversy is over material that is already on the page recognizing that there are non-conspiracy theories of the Deep State in the United States. A history section for the article has been squashed and recognition of the already included material in the lead paragraph has been squashed, and it's unlikely that any further development of non-conspiratorial Deep State theories will be accepted because the dominant side is saying this is only a page about the conspiracy theory even though that's not supported by the text or the RS footnotes. So I put up an NPOV tag and have been told by multiple editors that to put up such a tag would require consensus prior to it being put up. They quickly pulled it down. Since I can't find where consensus is a Wikipedia requirement for the NPOV tag, I figure either I need to get up to date on how to ask for sanctions or I need to work on the NPOV template page to clarify that consensus actually is a requirement. What would be a good next step? TMLutas (talk) 17:48, 11 May 2020 (UTC)