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, disputes sometimes arise that could be resolved with additional input from a larger segment of the community.
To request comment on a dispute, link to the page where the discussion should take place. Please add a brief, neutral statement of the issue involved. Don't list arguments for or against any position, or try to assign blame for the dispute. Don't sign entries, just link to the appropriate page.
Place the link in the appropriate section below. Disputes over article content should link to the talk page for the article in question. (If you simply want peer review of an article, then list it at Wikipedia:Peer review instead.) 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.
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, please wait until at least two people have contacted the user on his or her talk page (or the talk pages involved in the dispute) and failed to resolve the problem. Don't forget to follow Wikiquette. Items listed on this page may be removed if you fail to try basic methods of dispute resolution.
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.
- List newer entries on top - do not sign entries.
- Talk:Flecainide: persistent copyvio material being added to the article.
- Talk:Circumcision and Talk:History of male circumcision: A two-week edit war has turned a formerly balanced article into a confusing mess of criticisms and rebuttals. One editor cut an entire section from Circumcision and pasted it into History of male circumcision.
- Talk:Acronym: one user insists on reverting the article to an old version, to maintain confusion between acronyms and initialisms. Discussion is ongoing on the talk page on wether or not to use a strict or loose definition of the term.
- Talk:Classical_definition_of_republic NPOV dispute; the dispute covers only a very small part of the article, but it seems that no consensus can be reached
- Talk:Eligible receiver Listed here for comment. I'm not sure how true the content is.
- Talk:Atmospheric_reentry#A_better_future_approach.3F Listing here to invite comment. The original content disagreement has spiralled out of control.
- Talk:Affirmative action many problems, see recent edit history
- Over-categorization issues involving User:Pigsonthewing:
- Talk:Windows XP - User:Pigsonthewing keeps adding text to the Windows XP Starter Edition section that several contributors don't want. Though compromise has been tried, it's been agreed by several parties that the additional text in the article is unnecessary and is just someone's POV.
- User talk:Pigsonthewing#LOTR Birmingham (should be continued at Talk:The Lord of the Rings) - Should Category:Literature from Birmingham, England be included in The Lord of the Rings? The book was not written there, but some places in it were inspired by Birmingham. Discussion also continued at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion#Category:Literature from Birmingham, England.
- Similar dispute: Category talk:Birmingham, England - Should many of the articles in that category be removed from it due to overcategorization? See talk at User talk:Pigsonthewing#Category reverts for earlier discussion. The same user also insert the yet-more-tenuously related category Category:Literature from Birmingham, England at The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkle, the sole connection to these works being that the author lived in Birmingham when he wrote them.
- There has also been recent related 'discussion' over the scope of the British Painters category; notably at Talk:Syd Barrett, Talk:Bill Oddie and Talk:Charles, Prince of Wales. Related discussion (as mentioned below) is also at Category:Art.
- Talk:The Carpetbaggers Editor tagged early stub version with {{NPOV}} stating objection to sentence: The Carpetbaggers combined good writing, a strong story, and numerous more-or-less-gratuitous scenes of explicit sex." Writer of sentence removed it and greatly expanded the article. Editor objects to new article, stating "what I care about is you asserting your own opinion about the author's writing style." Not yet clear to others where current article makes such an assertion. How can this objection be met?
- Talk:Nazism - should Nazism be described as a reactionary or revolutionary ideology?
- Talk:United States Republican Party -- should an external link to "Republicans for Kerry," a special interest group of registered Republicans, be removed or stay?
- Talk:Asian Cup 2004 - contents and manners
- Talk:Holomovement - Should NPOV and Accuracy disputed article Holomovement redirect to Implicate and Explicate Order?
- Category talk:Art - How wide should the category of Painters be drawn? Should a person be best known as a painter, or is it sufficient that they have painted a painting at some time. Discussion starts at Talk:Bill Oddie, Talk:Tracey Emin and Wikipedia_talk:Categorization#.22What_belongs_in_a_category.22_guideline.3F. Similar earlier discussion is at Talk:Adolf_Hitler#Removal_Category_painter
- Talk:George W. Bush How should a section on the 2000 presidential election be worded?
- Talk:Lyndon LaRouche - Which version is more neutral: [1] or [2]?
- Talk:Quantum mechanics - An anonymous user wants to add stuff about certain quantum electrochemists, several others think it should not be included. Revert war has been going on for over a week now.
- Talk:Hugo Chávez - POV intro
- Talk:Matt Drudge - Revert war with one side insisting on discussion before deletes, other side acting unilaterally.
- Talk:Project_for_the_New_American_Century - Poll over NPOV dispute, to get page unprotected.
- Talk:T. Cullen Davis (There is not yet a dispute; this is an effort to precipitate any dispute before taking action whose reversal would probably be impractical.) Should the existing articles on 3 of the victims be merged into the accused's article, and become redirects to it?
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.
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.}
Before listing any user conduct dispute here, at least two people must try to resolve the same issue by talking with the person on his or her talk page or the talk pages involved in the dispute. The two users must document and certify their efforts when listing the dispute. 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
Approved pages - have met the two person threshold
List newer entries on top
- orthogonal - Allegations: Harassment, personal attacks, disrupting Wikipedia to illustrate a point.
- 33451 aka Mr. Grinch - Allegations: Vandalism and disruptive edits, especially related to pedophilia.
- /66.117.217.78 - Allegations: Reverting in spite of consensus and contrary to 3RR; page blanking; refusal to discuss issues.
- Danakil Allegations: ignorance of the naming convention.
- CVA Allegations: personal attacks, ignorance of the three revert rule, vandalism
- /VeryVerily - Allegations: ignores consensus, inserts POV, misrepresents edits in edit summaries, refuses to discuss issues.
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
List newer entries on top
- /Mintguy - Allegations: Using admin functions (Delete/Block/Protect) outside of policy, 3 Revert Rule violations, inactivity in performing sysop duties
- /Guanaco - Allegations: unprotecting without consenus
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.
General convention and policy issues
Some proposed and so unresolved conventions can be found at Category:Policy thinktank.
- List newer entries on top
- Should categories and articles for deletion be dealt with on one project page rather than separately, as they are now? please vote here.
- Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion - Are policies being followed in the deletion of categories?
- User:Brettz9/videoscript - proposed tutorial videos for Wikipedia
- Wikipedia talk:Check your fiction - what kind of fiction articles should be included in Wikipedia?
- Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television) - Should Wikipedia adopt the proposed convention, which details the primary disambiguator as (TV showtype)?
- Talk:Agustin_Stahl - should article titles include accents?
- Template talk:Substub - Should we have a template message for substubs?
- Wikipedia talk:Substub - Should we have a separate category of stubs for really short stubs (which are called substubs)?
- Wikipedia talk:Dealing with disruptive or antisocial editors
- Talk:Bowling_for_Columbine#Category:Propaganda - How should we choose which articles to include in categories when a dispute arises?
- MediaWiki talk:Europe — Which dependencies should be in the box? Should dependencies be linked to dependent areas? Which countries should be included? Should there be a flag?
- Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions and Lists of pieces — Lists of pieces has a format borrowed from Lists of solo piano pieces, which lists pages by composer, style or period, and nationality or culture. Now a list of pages itself and every alphabetical page clearly violates the "Do not use an article name that suggests a hierarchy of articles" convention, example: List of solo piano pieces by composer: G. Do we add lists such as this as an exception to that convention or make the "lists" one list instead of many?
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/Footer dispute — dispute over enforcing/developing standard features of a specific WikiProject.
- Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki namespace — What format to use for custom messages.
- Wikipedia talk:Page footers — Use of MediaWiki namespace to create page footers for various purposes.
- Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football Clubs/page name — A discussion, not a dispute. Grimsby Town F.C. or Grimsby Town Football Club