Wikipedia:Third opinion

Wikipedia:Third Opinion is a guide for the use of third-party mediators in a dispute. When editors cannot come to a compromise and need a third opinion, they list a dispute here.

This page is for informally resolving disputes involving only two editors. More complex disputes should be worked out on article talk pages, or by following the dispute resolution process.

The third-opinion process requires good faith on all sides.

Listing a dispute

• In the section below, list a controversy involving only two editors.
• Provide a short, neutral description of the disagreement, with links to appropriate talk pages or specific edits in question. By giving a link to a specific section in a talk page you will increase the chance of a useful response.

• For example: "Talk:Style guide#"Descriptive" style guides: Disagreement about existence of nonprescriptive style guides. 12:34, 5 June 2006 (UTC)"

• Sign the listing with "~~~~~" (five tildes) to add the date without your name.
• Do not discuss on this page. Leave the discussion to the linked talk page.

Listings that do not follow the above instructions may be removed.

Providing third opinions

• Provide third opinions on the relevant article's talk page, not on this page.
• Do not provide third opinions recklessly. Remember that in many of these cases your opinion is a tie-breaker. In other cases both sides may have presented valid arguments. Read the arguments of the disputants thoroughly.
• Third opinions should be perceived as neutral. Do not offer a third opinion if you have had past dealings with the article or editors involved in the dispute that would bias your response. Make sure to write your opinion in a civil and nonjudgmental way.
• Consider watching pages on which you state your opinion for a week. Articles listed on this page are frequently watched by very few people.
• You are free to disagree with both disputants.
• After providing a third opinion, remove the listing from this page.

Active disagreements

Firestone Tire and Rubber Company A full blown edit war has been brewing for months. Two new editors User:Mobile 01 (less than 500 edits), User:LucaZ (less than 50 edits--exclusively has edited only too Firestone) began spliting the criticism sections and moving them. User:LucaZ moved one of the controversy sections to a new article.User:Mobile 01 has moved another section to an existing article, User:Mobile 01 has replaced all of the referenced material with material from Firestone corporation and unreferenced material which is, in my opinion only favorable to Firestone. I spent several hours tonight going through trying to restore User:LucaZ and User:Mobile 01 deletions of referenced material, most of which meet the five pillars of wikipedia, WP:V, WP:OR, WP:POV. It will take several hours more to restore all this referenced material which has been removed. I will waste several more hours and build the edit history on the talk page. I have asked for WP:PROTECT while this is taken care of. Please see the talk page for more information.Best wishes, Travb (talk) 11:36, 11 January 2007 (UTC)