Template talk:Controversial-issues

I don't think this template should be deleted. I would disagree heartily that a template saying that certain sections of an article are disputed and others are not is just another way of saying that every part of the article is disputed. Why Netoholic said that "Template:Controversial3" is "essentially yet another version of Template:TotallyDisputed" is beyond me.

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(moved from Wikipedia:Templates for deletion)

FT2's comment on {{Controversial2}} and {{Controversial3}} templates:

I have been struck that many good articles become gridlocked under LOCK or NPOV tags. Thats not the wiki way. I concluded that a big part of the problem is that most people with objections tend to use only a few (fairly strong) templates, when in fact neutrally these may not be good descriptively. I wrote my conclusions on Village Pump (Policy) here on Nov 9, which summarises the problem, cross references it, gives examples and shows how more appropriate templates can help resolve the issue. I wrote a comment on Nov 10 at the end of Template_talk:Controversial (please also read) noting there were different ways an article could becontroversial, so 2 or 3 templates to fairly refect each were needed. This is important, because to wrongly tag an article is in its own way, more misleading than to wrongly write it - at one stroke it adds an entire POV which if not accurate is a problem. It also polarises debate.

Example of this approach at work: one article was suffering an edit/revert war, principally over whether the subject matter was POV and what should be covered by the article. Facts within the article were not disputed. The edits moved between "NPOV" and "nothing". I re-tagged the article to a tag, {{TitleNPOV}}, that explicitly said there was a dispute over neutrality of the title - and since then the effect has been that productive debate has resumed, with both sides feeling this is a more accurate description and hence respectful of their views, in effect by tagging it correctly as "this title or scope is in dispute but the contents are not", a consensus was created which previous templates had failed to do.

As a serious wiki-ist involved as best I'm able (when I have the time) in

• Mediation (Cultural and historical background of Jesus),
• Analysis of articles needing rewriting (Paraphilia),
• Writing of substantial articles (Transactional analysis)
• Updating key pages for clarity to contributors (WP:RFC, WP:RfM)
• NPOV contribution and rewrites to articles which are heavily controversial and emotive (Pursuit of Nazi collaborators, Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict).

It is my experience that a correct tag permits compromise and co-operation. Hence I created these two tags plus another Template:ActiveDiscuss to allow articles being worked on or subject to dispute to be marked as "actively being developed" or "partly disputed", so that future wiki-ists can actually build articles and not get caught up so often in edit wars over one side tagging everything as disputed, the other side untagging everything as OK. The truth's normally in between, and Wikipedia will gain from having a few templates that allow contributors to say this. FT2 19:47, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)

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