Wikipedia:Requests for comment: Difference between revisions

For general comments and feedback, use Wikipedia:Village pump, and choose the proper subsection.

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, sometimes it's useful to request broader opinions from the rest of the community.

This page is a way that anyone can request other Wikipedians to help them resolve difficulties and disputes in articles or talk pages. Anyone may visit any of these articles, to help them reach agreement. A good quality RfC can help contributors resolve differences, add different insights, give comments and opinions on how others might see some wording, and so on. When listing a dispute here, you should also place a notice on the appropriate talk page.

It will help the RFC process if everyone who lists something on this page tries to help out at least one other page listed here.

Overview

When to use RfC

RFC is appropriate when you want other wikipedians to visit the page, to allow a consensus or a better quality of decision, to help resolve a dispute or break a deadlock.

Before adding an entry here:

• 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, at least two people should have contacted the user on their talk page, or the talk pages involved in the dispute, and failed to resolve the problem.
• Don't forget to follow Wikiquette. Wikiquette is more important in resolving a dispute, not less.

Alternatives to RfC

• If you simply want peer review of an article, then list it at Wikipedia:Peer review.
• 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.
• If you are in deadlock with just one other user, consider getting a third opinion.
• For a mild-to-moderate conflict, you might try Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts. Wikiquette alerts are an option for a quick, streamlined way to get an outside view. The goal is to nip potential problems in the bud.
• To request votes instead of comments, consider a listing on Wikipedia:Current Surveys.

How to use RfC

• To request other users to comment on an issue, add a link to the Talk page for the article, a brief neutral statement of the issue, and the date.
• Only with the date, don't list the details, and don't submit arguments or assign blame.
• On the Talk page of the article, it can help to summarize the dispute.

Responding to RfCs

• Try not to be confrontational. Be friendly and keep calm.
• Mediate where possible - identify common ground, attempt to draw editors together rather than push them apart.
• If necessary, educate users by referring to the appropiate Wikipedia policies.

Article content disputes

List links to talk pages where participants cannot reach consensus and are thus stalling progress on the article. Discussions with no recent comments may have dried up, and will be removed.

1. List newer entries on top.
2. Link to the Talk page.
3. Sign entries with the date only. Use five tildes: ~~~~~.

Philosophy

• Talk:Libertarianism - is Libertarianism a political philosophy involving fundamental questions about the state, government, politics, property, law and the enforcement of a legal code by authority, or is it just a plain philosophy? - Ta bu shi da yu 23:50, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Religion

• Talk:Gerald B. Kieschnick has NPOV issues raised by User:Ropcat, with multiple reverts without discussion. Can we get a third point of view about the situation to decide how to proceed?

20:33, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

History, Geography

• Talk:Apartheid There is a now two-month old dispute regarding a two-word inclusion in the section on the history of apartheid in South Africa. We really could use some fresh eyes. 17:55, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Moses Kalankaytuk Two users argue about whether an early medieval historian named Moses of Kalankaytuk was a Caucasian Albanian or Armenian historian. The point of contention is that whereas the historian wrote in his chronicles that he was born in a village in Caucasian Albania, his chronicles have reached us in medieval Armenian language. --Tabib 12:49, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

Please be aware of possible copyrights problems with the above mentioned article of Moses Kalankaytuk. This text belongs to the publishers of the Russion Library On-Line (© 2004, Библиотека «Вехи»), and it is initially published at http://vehi.net/istoriya/armenia/kagantv/kagankatvatsi.html (Movses Kagankatvatsi (Kalankatuatsi) and Мовсэс Каганкатваци (Каланкатуаци)) WikiAdm 17:57, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The formal request to remove this article has been made, as suggested by Francs2000, at Wikipedia:Copyright problems, and it can be viewed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_problems#June_24. WikiAdm 00:27, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Pls, take into consideration that this user named "WikiAdm" is actually the sockpuppet of Rovoam and his claims are spurious and false (as they always were). Pls, see, Talk:Moses_Kalankaytuk#.22Copyright_Warning.22_-_Farce_by_Rovoam for details.--Tabib 09:35, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

• Talk:Tickling A User has made statement that references to Chinese tickle torture is a racial slur against Chinese people. User has challenged the source material and advocates total removal of any reference to the Chinese in the article. Comments are requested from neutral parties. -Husnock 19:00, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Harry Dexter White Dispute over whether it is uncontroversial to state outright that White was a Soviet spy, or whether it should be presented as an issue under dispute. Comment from those who do not have an axe to grind, but know about the issues at hand, would be appreciated.
• Talk:Elamite Empire Elamite empire has been claimed as Iranian. Attempts to rewrite have been met with instant reverts. Recrudescence of on-going conflict also on view in Talk:History of Khuzestan, Talk:Ethnic politics of Khuzestan, and Talk: Khuzestan. Elamite empire also described as Iranian in Iran-Iraq war. One POV on conflict available at Historiography and nationalism. 09:19, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Pakistan: There is a dispute in the above two pages, on the following issue: Whether unprovable claims can be placed about the "reason country famous for" in the top paragraph of country articles in Wikipedia. In this case, should the article on Pakistan start with the sentences Also Pakistan has come into international spotlight due to the Nuclear proliferation racket run by A Q Khan to Iran and North Korea. Pakistan became known in the west after 9/11 for its support for the Islamic fundamentalist groups like Talibans and Kashmiri Militants, in the very first paragraph. Dispute over whether this claims are the two most important reasons Pakistan is famous for. 07:27, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Bohemian Grove Dispute concerns linking Rotten Library articles to their corresponding Wikipages. This dispute covers about 30 articles, but the first addition was Bohemian Grove. 06:20, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

Politics

• Talk:Anarchism — already listed in RfC on June 19th, this article and other related ones continue to be repeatedly modified to a highly POV slant which attempts to cast anarchism primarily as a libertarian offshoot. The persons responsible for these edits have formed an insular clique, supporting each other's POV changes as NPOV. In addition, these persons openly advocate edit wars and discuss the next phase of edit wars they intend to continue when the article is no longer locked. 05:37, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Fidel Castro — dispute over what the intro should and shouldn't mention about Castro's domestic politics. Presently stuck in tit-for-tat revert wars. 14:36, 2005 Jun 25 (UTC)
• Talk:Democratic peace theory — two editors are at loogerheads; the temperature varies from very warm to hot, and widening the editing base might help. 22:02, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Islamophobia - despite attempts to properly discuss edits, this page has descended into a revert war causing this page to be protected by the admins. 09:04, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Anarcho-capitalism — One editor making multiple reverts of lead line in article and seems unwilling to accept any compromise 21:22, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Noam Chomsky#RFC — dispute over a speech Chomsky may, or may not, have given in Hanoi. 11:53, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Anarchism - edit war over the status of "Anarcho-Capitalism". One faction wishes "anarchism" to be defined in a manner that includes A/C, and to feature A/C prominently among the types of anarchism. The other faction regards "anarchism" as being socialist by definition and excluding A/C. See survey near the bottom of page. 01:02, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Council on American-Islamic Relations - One editor regularly inserts anti-CAIR POV and refuses to discuss edits. Are these NPOV claims for an article to make? "CAIR has a "campaign to silence critics", "CAIR has subscribed to a policy of wildly inflating the Muslim population count in the United States." Also uses the term "extremist Wahhabi", "Wahhaby lobby" (sic) 03:11, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:George W. Bush - previous RfC drew little response; this time people from both sides have worked to create a section to give the background to RfC respondents, to make it easier for you to comment. 21:06, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Monarchy in Canada - should the article include a "One Crown or Many?" section that contains a brief quote from a Canadian court ruling on the monarchy? 20:47, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Monarchist League of Canada - is it a fact, or an opinion, that the "Canadian Crown" is "distinctly Canadian"?20:55, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:John Milius NPOV dispute over political opinions being voiced in neutral article John Milius. Editor has reverted to same or similar statements following previous check npov clearance. - Seasee 07:46, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Literature, Media, Art

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Arcade games/Infobox, regarding the edit war of Template:Infobox Arcade Game and Pac-Man, taking place between myself (User:Poiuytman), and User:Mr.Do!. He feels that the Infobox field of "Ports" should go, and "Notes" should stay, while I am of the opposite opinion. Users also involved in the discussion include Captain Yesterday, Frecklefoot, and Mee Ronn. Mr.Do! does not appear to be a native English speaker, so discussing the matter is difficult with him. I'm asking for more opinions on the matter, so a consensus can be reached. (An adept German translator would be helpful too!). Also, possible breaking of three-revert rule. --Poiuyt Man ^talk 12:37, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Mariah Carey. A handful of Carey fan editors have made the article and its (many) subarticles about Carey's songs, albums, and films very much violating both NPOV and factual accuracy. Request for help toning down verbiage, admin intervention with regards to individual users and overall decisions, and help reformatting articles to fit standards set by pre-existing similar articles. --FuriousFreddy 23:15, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Phone sex (I suppose this is media!). Two anons (special:contributions/24.205.205.22 and special:contributions/68.56.232.25 (probably now user:Karlelvis)) are spewing out chunks of meaningless text onto the talk page and 68.56... is conducting 45 day survey of himself to determine what external links and language are appropriate in the article. 22:25, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:American_Idiot Which of two images of the album cover should be used? 16:12, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Aesthetic Realism - Should the article state that its founder committed suicide, or use a euphemism? Is Aesthetic Realism known for its artistic reflections, or its claim to "change" people from homosexuality?

Maths, Science, Medicine

• Talk:William Shockley - Does Shockley's comment about his children's "regression" necessitate a note on a theory of the heritability of intelligence, or is a link to regression toward the mean sufficient?
• Talk:Thimerosal in relation to vaccination and autism.16:12, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Race and intelligence Appropriateness of repeatedly describing an alleged IQ discrepancy's effects exclusively in racial terms (cause may errantly be assumed). Dispute over whether the article and subject need to disassociate cause and effect to a much greater degree in order to present the subject neutrally. 04:41, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Time Should article begin with "Definition of Time "Time is that degree of freedom which allows a particle in space to occupy more than one position in space." "? It would be nice with a third opinion, please.
• Talk:AIDS - is the Bangui definition still used? Is the connection between HIV and diagnosed AIDS cases less strong than is commony supposed? Is medical transmission of AIDS a major factor in Sub-saharan Africa?
• Talk:Human — argument over the accuracy of the summary.
• Talk:Dynamic theory of gravity - Dispute about the reality of the thoery: is this version [1] or this version [2] better? Should it be VFD? 10:52, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC).
• Circumcision, and especially talk:Circumcision. Edit/revert war with extensive personal attacks.
• Talk:Healthy eating. The original article used the form "Healthy eating", within its content, and as its title. An editor has recently tried to change this to "Healthful eating". Is this inappropriate given Wikipedia's policy on retaining the original English usage in the article.

Engineering, Technology

Talk:BitTorrent Ongoing dispute on wether to include BitTorrent search engines/directory sites in the external links section. This edit war has been going on for too long, and it is clear a consensus cannot be reached without outside intervention. 23:03, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia

Wikipedia talk:Spoiler warning — Should this article feature the {{spoiler-about}} and {{spoiler-other}} templates, or is the {{spoiler}} template sufficient? 12:03, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Article title disputes

Most recent entries at the top. Please sign entries with the date only. (Use five tildes: ~~~~~)

• List of misleading place names. One editor believes that this implies deliberate deception, and should be changed to List of ambiguous place names. 22:40, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Biography of Nikola Tesla. Why isn't the biography under Nikola Tesla? 17:21, 2005 Jun 15 (UTC)
• List of tyrants is a new article to remove POV from two other articles Tyrant and Tyrannicide. It has been listed VfD. Please read Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of tyrants and vote as you think fit. 17:10, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Talk:Islamist terrorism - Should the title be "Islamic terrorism" instead?
• Talk:Gustav II Adolph of Sweden - A request that the article be moved to Gustavus Adolphus has resulted in an "approval vote" (as designated by one user who set up the vote) in a fashion that clearly violates established practices and renders the vote difficult, if not impossible, to interpret.
• Category_talk:Dialogues_of_Plato - debate about whether or not to change naming standard en masse. Disambiguation and naming issues. Needs more voices.
• Talk:Social Democratic Workers' Party of Sweden -- The article was moved here without any previous discussion. There's a dispute going on whether it should be moved back, to the form officially used by the party itself (Swedish Social Democratic Party), which is also the form supported by many major international institutions as well as the most commonly used form elsewhere.
• Talk:Bowser (Nintendo) -- a vote on if he should have his Article changed to King Bowser or to have it remain the same.
• Wikipedia:Conspiracy theory -- Appropriateness of "conspiracy theory" in an encyclopedic article's title generally. Is it NPOV? Are all "alternative theories" really "conspiracy theories"? Voting in progress. A more general discussion of the dispute can be found at Wikipedia talk:Conspiracy theory.

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.

Before listing any user conduct dispute here, at least two people should have tried to resolve the same issue by discussing it with the subject on his or her talk page or the talk pages involved in the dispute. This must involve the same dispute or concern the same disputed type(s) of activity, not different ones.

Once the request for comment is open, these two people must document their individual efforts, provide evidence that those efforts have failed to produce change, and sign the comment page. Requests for comment which do not meet these minimum requirements after 48 hours from creation are considered "uncertified" and will be de-listed. The subject RFC page will also be deleted, unless the subject has explicitly requested it to be retained.

Old discussions are kept in Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct disputes archive.

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} ~~~~~

Candidate pages - still need to meet the two person threshold
List newer entries on top

• /Flowerofchivalry - POV pushing, Revert-warring, Violation of 3RR, Lack of etiquette, Lack of wikiquette, Resorting to personal attacks, Abuse of (nonexistent) power, Not responding to constructive discussion, Ignoring comments and warnings, Utilizing anonymous IP addresses to further revert-war, Inability to procure evidence and support

Approved pages - have met the two person threshold
List newer entries on top

• /205.154.159.1 - edit warring, reverting anyone who fixes problems with his grammar
• /Hogeye - edit warring, recreation of deleted pages, personal attacks
• /211.28.*.* aka "Time Cube Guy" - Allegations: repeatedly inserting contested material, revert warring, not responding to discussion, ignoring the opinions of all other users, using numerous IP addresses which allows for evasion of blocking
• /Nick Boulevard - POV, personal attacks, persistent copyright violation
• /68.170.0.238 - the "stop drinking soda" vandal, persistent POV edits, numerous warnings, vandalism
• /Argyrosargyrou - 3RR rule, POV & nationalism, abuse of VfD process, namecalling
• /Emico - extreme bias, violation of 3RR rule, user baiting, disregard for Wikiquette
• /214.13.4.151 - NPOV, failure to discuss
• /Mlorrey - dispute over NPOV and inclusion of POV, especially in regards to gun control issues
• /64.62.161.12 - block evasion, sockpuppet, 3RR, incivility, trolling, user-baiting, disruption, disregard for Wikipedia policy.
• /Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 2 - 3RR, personal attacks, bad-faith editing
• /Zivinbudas - Edit warring, 3RR violations, personal attacks
• /Trey Stone - sock puppets, 3RR violations, personal attacks, edit warring

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} ~~~~~

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

• /Mackeriv - edit warring, blocking user being involved and whitout talk, scoffing the situation.

Approved pages - have met the two person threshold
List newer entries on top

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.

New listings here, please

• AtaturktheArseBandit (talk · contribs) - recently vandalized gay icon and a few other articles. BlankVerse ∅ 12:26, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

User dispute archive

General convention and policy issues

More proposed conventions and policies can be found at Category:Wikipedia proposals.

List newer entries on top. Please sign entries with the date only. (Use five tildes: ~~~~~)

• Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship/Proposal 2 - a new proposal for de-adminship procedure. 15:17, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• User:ChrisO/Naming disputes is a proposal to establish objective criteria and a dispute resolution panel to help manage and resolve persistent naming disputes.
• Wikipedia:Categorization policy is a bold proposal to make WP categorization more consistent and stable.
• Wikipedia:Doppelganger account, Proposed policy on existing users creating "imposter" accounts before the imposters can. 03:01, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)
• Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Names, an attempt to create a guideline for categories of people by first or last name.
• Wikipedia:Pro & con lists - Does this have enough support to be a guideline?
• Wikipedia talk:Remove personal attacks - the status of RPA is under debate; some people swear by it, others intensely dislike it. Please give your opinion on whether this should be policy, guideline, discouraged or forbidden.
• Wikipedia:Merge is a tutorial on merging and renaming, intended for new users. Please proofread.
• Wikipedia:Block on demand - Should admins grant users' requests for a temporary block?

Archived convention disputes