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 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

After reading the above instructions, add your dispute here.

1. Template:Buena Vista County, Iowa and Template:Bremer County, Iowa. Disagreement about whether to link twice to certain cities in these counties: there are townships of these names (not being linked on the template) that are redirects to the cities. One editor believes that the double link are unnecessary, because the cities aren't townships, while the other believes that they should be, because the townships exist. Because the basic principle underlies several templates, this is being discussed on User talk:Omnedon#Co-extensive townships. 20:36, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
2. Talk:List of Cuban Americans#RfC: Multiple Entries and Non-Notable names. Disagreement over notable and non-notable names to be listed. 02:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
3. Credit crunch#External Links and Debt money#External links. There is an edit war brewing here and I am sort of done with it. User:Karmaisking clearly took exception to the deletion of some external links on the debt money page which were nothing more than websites to sell books. The war has expanded in scope to Credit crunch where I deleted an entire slew of links to nothing more than articles about the recent subprime crisis. The links were complete with the editor's personal commentary and in my opinion made the article unreadable. Now I am being attacked on various pages. I am certainly no angel here and probably should have issued various warnings. But now I have no choice but to appeal for another opinion. 03:39, 11 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}}.