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The Third Opinion is a guide for the use of third-party mediators in a dispute. Sometimes editors cannot come to a compromise, and require a tiebreaker—a third opinion.

In the context of disagreements—related to policy or content—sometimes these disputes involve only two editors. This frequently happens on obscure pages, which not many people watch.

Reasoning

Some things can only be done one way or another. Despite good will on both sides, some disagreements cannot be solved without outside help. When only two people are involved, this may lead to a deadlock. This page is meant to provide a streamlined process for solving disagreements involving only two editors.

Guidelines

Listing

• Any editor may list any controversy involving only two editors. If you are not one of the participants in the disagreement, however, you are encouraged to provide a third opinion yourself.
• This page is meant only for disagreements involving precisely two people. If more are involved, try convincing—or coming to a compromise with—the other people. If that fails, try other Misplaced Pages dispute-solving procedures.
• If a third opinion has been provided in a disagreement, please remove it from the list below (regardless of whether you listed it in the first place). If you provide a third opinion in any disagreement below, please remove it from the list.

Providing Third Opinions

• Only provide third opinions on the relevant talk pages, not on this page.
• While this page is meant to provide a swift procedure, do not provide third opinions recklessly. Remember that in most cases listed on this page, you alone get to decide either way. Read the arguments of the disputants thoroughly.
• Consider watching pages on which you state your opinion for a week or so, to ensure your opinion is not ignored. Articles listed on this page are frequently watched by very few people.
• You are, of course, entirely free to provide a third option—that is, to disagree with both disputants. If you do this, as in all cases in which a third opinion has been provided, remove the article from the list below.

Active disagreements

Add new conflicts at the bottom. Use short (one line), neutral descriptions, and provide links to locations where more information is available. Do not sign your name, but add a date (using "~~~~~" - five tildes). Please do not discuss the disagreement on this page.

It will help if everyone who lists something here weighs in on another disagreement.

Listings that do not follow instructions may be removed.

• (Dispute is summed up here: Several inappropriate Coldplay article reverts) — User:Madchester believes that while WikiProject Albums and the Manual of Style are guidelines, my edits removing unnecessary/duplicate internal links and fixing presentation are somehow out of line, since guidelines aren't meant to be inflexible and we're "technically" not required to follow any rules/guides. I don't want to get into an editing war with anyone, let alone an actual Wiki admin like him, but this listing stems from a batch of reverts of presentation/formatting edits made to several Coldplay album & song pages that were, in my belief, in accordance with consensus at both WikiProject Albums and the Manual of Style. I believe he is improperly reverting/editing against consensus for his own individual preference, especially since he created the majority of these articles, and I'd appreciate other assessments of the situation. - 09:23, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

• Circumcision advocacy The article has been locked because of a slow edit war between two editors. The two editors have not been able to agree and the dispute has widened to a dispute on the legitimacy of the article itself. 22:13, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

• Panavision Featured article had content from a persistent anonymous IP (who I think is now registered as Bullandgoose) which included very wild speculative accusations about the company's financial future, as well as other original research and POV. Attempts have been made both to NPOV the content and to discuss on the Talk page, but the user seems to have little interest in obeying policy, and furthermore has tried to delete comments from the Talk page. 09:59, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

• Paris page proposed improvements have fallen into a "stall and revert" deadlock. Improvements proposed are for page coherency, content accessibility, removal of redundant info (appearing on other pages) and factual context (veracity), yet none have made it permanently online to date. Would much appreciate some unbiased critique. 17:42, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

• Noahide Laws dispute over whether or not this page should be included in Category:Jewish_Christian_topics. Dispute between two parties is here: Talk:Noahide_Laws#Jewish_Christian_topics. Third opinion is requested. 20:23, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

• Ken Kutaragi article protected today and a victim of revert wars. --Brazil4Linux 23:15, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

• Charles Whitman article dispute over whether a link to the Handbook of Texas is advertising or not — between two parties. Also, whether Claire Wilson's unborn child should be included in the "list of deaths" — dispute between three, possibly four, parties. 01:31, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
• procrastination Disagreement about how much content should be in the article, and what type of content should be in there. 08:03, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

• Michael Graham. I'm requesting input from a level-headed, registered user. Currently, the article and talk page have factual accuracy concerns (which Graham addressed himself in one of his columns), and anons adding long disclaimers, silliness, incivility, some revert warring, and POV remarks to the article. This is one diff, though it would be best to look at the page history from the last several days. --17:36, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

• Arabic Numerals. This page is falling victim to unreasonable persistent reversion by a few individuals with strong Hindu Nationalist and Anti-Arab biases. I have made repeated requests for them to abide by Misplaced Pages policies that "Content... must be based on verifiable sources"; Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view, Misplaced Pages:No original research, Misplaced Pages: Cite sources, Misplaced Pages:Verifiability, and Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources. I have spent many hours in tedious, painstaking work, verifying sources, correcting errors, citing reliable sources on a point-by-point basis. I have had some help and support from some reasonable editors whom I thank, but this is getting tiring as I'm going over the same points with them, over and over again, and they refuse to cite reliable sources and abstain from deleting content into which much effort had been put to ensure it's in line with reliable sources. Please see the talk:Arabic_numerals for details, and please help keep this page reasonable and reliable.

• Georg Forster A long standing NPOV dispute on how much explicit should the description of anti-Polish attitude of the person be. Alx-pl D 20:24, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

• Territories detached from the Baltic States by the Soviet Union The article, originally titled Lost territories of the Baltic States is being frequently renamed to satisfy different pro-Russian or anti-Russian POVs. It seems that the POV content of the article does not match any of the titles anyway, which only adds to the confusion. 13:43, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

• JT LeRoy - Two points of view exist on whether author JT LeRoy exists and has written his books. Editors with both points of view want a neutral and equal voice. Would help for someone unfamiliar with the issue to review and advise on these points, with an end result being an equal, neutral and informational entry.

• Politecnico di Milano - I'm sorry to bother on a seemingly trivial problem, but the page dedicated to one of the largest universities in Italy cannot carry a heavy deal of negative POV by a disgruntled ex-student. However, an edit war is not something I wish to get stuck in, so I ask, please, if anyone from the community is willing to engage in a mediation on the edits and the talk of this page. Thanks. --Raistlin 22:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

• Abdullah II of Jordan and Hashemite articles. Neutral and unbiased POV is being disputed concerning external links being added to the mentioned articles. The dispute has been called to attention on the articles' talk pages, as well as the body of the dispute found here. - 22:05, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• Tom Dorsch - User:Jareth has repeatedly vandalized this page. She knows nothing, zero, about the subject. She now claims that the accuracy is in dispute, but this is not true, as nobody has disputed the accuracy. I feel that she should not be allowed to edit topics that she knows nothing about. I am a well known chess journalist whose articles are published in chess magazines around the world, and User:Jareth knows nothing about the game or about this topic.

15:02, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Request made by Sam Sloan (also subject of the article Sam Sloan), who has a tenous relationship with reality. Disclosure: I cannot aspire to NPOV WRT Sloan. Billbrock 02:16, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

• Nick Baker (disputed conviction) Page is being repeatedly reverted by Baker's supporters to make it appear that criticism of the campaign was held by just one individual and to take out comparisons of conviction rates in other countries. See Talk:Nick Baker (disputed conviction) 23:40, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

• Zombie - - request for comments, a user believes "there is a realistic zombie threat that might happen". See Talk:Zombie. 20:40, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

• Architecture— This is a dispute over the initial (introductory) definition of architecture.

normxxx believes the opening page should be the disambiguation page, and the current page be explicitly devoted to built architecture.

natalinasmpf wants the opening page to remain exactly as is.

See talk:architecture, item 10. normxxx 01:44, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

• TV.com - Is a detailed description of forum banter and "bad user list" encyclopedic? Revert war, only one party using talk page. 21:52, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

• Gann Academy—There is a dispute between two editors over whether unsourced information should be included or discarded as original research. 05:02, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

• Bulgarians - There is a conflict over the incluse of 2005 Bulgarian estimates on the statistics template. 10:28, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

• List of Ukrainians - There has been a long revert war over whether or not ethnic Poles/Austrians who were born in the territory of Ukraine through territorial changes should be included in the list. 10:32, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

• Uzbeks - A revert war is waged by a newbie who keeps adding modern copyrighted images and deleting a copyfree image from 1910. Also deletes a redirect to Uzbeg Khan and his mention in the text. 13:16, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

• Koniuchy massacre - it appears that two different versions of the article evolved in course of a revert war. The major difference seems to be that one version mentions "soviet partisans" as those responsible for the killings, while the other focuses on their Jewish ethnicity instead. Pretty silly, but third opinion is requested to help out. 19:37, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

• There is an ongoing dispute at Talk:Grunge music. User:Leyasu is arguing for a POV that he has not given any sources for. His opinion is countered by a cited source in the article, which he claims is useless because it is not a web page (he claims it does not count as a source because he can not get ahold of the source for free). He has also used personal attacks in an attempt to promote his view; though he was scolded by an admin for doing this, he continues to do so. He has edited the article twice to fit his view, and it has been reverted both times. Any additional opinions on the situation would be welcome. -- 22:50, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

• Hanover 96 - The dispute is between spelling Hanover and Hannover. Kingjeff 00:09, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

• Rescue Squad - Dispute over term Rescue squad as capable of referring to a piece of fire apparatus. One user, a member at a NJ squad, holds that the term can only be used to describe an all EMS department, while the other user, a member at a MD squad, holds that the term can be used to describe a department or a type of unit as it is in his county. Third party preferably familiar with EMS/Fire terminology. 12:02, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

• The Chronic, Rakim, Das EFX, and Dead Serious (album). Four old-school hip-hop articles. Dispute is over POV content and verification. Some discussion on User_talk:Chubdub. 22:05, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

• Image_talk:Sipp-memory.jpg. The dispute is about whether the image really depicts SIPP computer memory, or rather memory of another type.

• frot (penile-penile frottage) a user who runs a sort of personals/safer sex education/op ed website for men interested in frot has repeatedly

1.inserted an out of place insistance that men who enjoy frot can be of any sexual orinetation, even though the article only identifies the participants as male not gay or bi and neither tribadism nor coitus have any such statement 2. deleted all links that aren't either authored by him or interviews of him 3. deleted any minimal safer sex warnings that apply to frot, but still identifying it as safer than oral sex or intercourse

• Feminem.com - I think this page needs a little editing to help to conform to NPOV, while the page's creator thinks I'm a jerk. 03:27, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

• Baltimore, Maryland - Wow, I have this article in my watchlist and I've observed a dispute over the city's climate. Yes, climate. This has been going on for months. Someone: please stop the insanity. ccwaters 17:34, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

• Sathya Sai Baba dispute about including homepages as a source and about the amount of space provided to apologists. 15:33, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

• Caratacus and Claudia Rufina - this dispute has reared its ugly head again. Persistent attempts are being made to include a completely bogus British Israelite theory connecting Caratacus to various early Christians. In the course of arguing the matter with User:WikiRat last year I investigated the theory and identified all its many and varied errors of fact. Throughout the process I have attempted to "tame" the edits by correcting them and pointing out the errors rather than simply deleting them as they probably deserve. Now User:LinuxDude is reinserting all the discredited arguments and removing all references to errors and misquoted sources. I'm doing my best to keep fantasy out of this article, but it's not easy. Somebody help! 20:20, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages dispute resolution