Category talk:Wikipedia neutral point of view disputes

the two/several sides can never find a common ground
Question: to what extent do these topics fall into the category "the two/several sides can never find a common ground" - and interested observers cannot see what the fuss is about. Even if a total neutral (Martian, Triffid, person from a country which had minimal trade or cultural links) were to write the "basic article and areas which are disputed and by whom" they would be accused of being NPOV by those involved in the dispute. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.85.6.26 (talk • contribs) Special:Contributions/212.85.6.26

Talk pages and user pages
Should talk pages and user pages pages be in this category? There's quite a few in here. Look under the letter U. -- Kjkolb 09:54, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I edited most of the talk pages and either "no wikied" the tag, moved it to the article's page or removed it altogether as appropriate. I removed them when there was no justification given for the tag. I moved them to the article's page when there was justification for the tag and it was recently added. I no wikied the tag when the tag itself was being discussed. I hope this isn't a problem. There are 45 user and user talk pages in the category, but I feel less sure about editing them. -- Kjkolb 08:51, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Proposed subcategories
Here are some catagories which I think would help trim down this page:


 * Sex and sexuality
 * Human conflict
 * Religion
 * Politics and ideology

I was thinking along the same lines - Zarboki 11:07, 20 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I came onto the Talk Page to basically propose the same thing, so in the spirit of Be Bold, I'm going to go ahead and create some subcats, please feel free to contribute Sherurcij 08:01, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * NOw I notice myself removing both Category:NPOV disputes and the simply ((npov)) tags in order to replace them with the more specific...hopefully this is still moving towards making WP a little more organized by subcatting, and doesn't present serious problems...unless somebody felt like making up a nice little ((religiousNPOV)) picture for the top of articles Sherurcij 08:23, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * That would actually be much appreciated, if somebody would do that and go through the categories then adding it where needed :) Sherurcij 10:31, 22 November 2005 (UTC)


 * How about adding History to the list? Also, should we create a separate set of dispute tags that add the category to various articles? Some sort of and so on? Halibutt 20:28, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * There seems to be no real use of this and little point. It would be better to sort by date to get the real old ones looked at. -- Jbamb 14:29, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

First, I would like to suggest catagorization that might be automated. For example, talk pages and user pages could have seperate categories. Second, I think it would help if we could search for tagged pages by how old they are. I hate to think that some pages have been rightfully tagged for years and nobody has given any attention to them. PhatJew 11:53, 14 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I was going to set up categorizing by date as that seems to be the most important thing. Stale POV disputes need to get resolved.  I don't think categories really adds to much in terms of helping things get resolved.  -- Jbamb 15:52, 14 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I respectfully disagree. I went through last night and cleared out about half of the religious NPOV, because it is an area of interest that I can speak to intelligently. I think people interested in sports, science, etc. might feel the same. Also, the catagories I suggested above make for easier cleanup. For example, you can go and nowiki all the discussions of npov in talk pages. PhatJew 03:19, 15 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Would sorting them both ways help? I don't know if a bot can sort by topic, but if the NPOV tags are first sorted by date, people could then sort the oldest ones by topic, sort of like a hierahical system.  I'm proposing on Wikipedia talk:Maintenance that all backlog pages goto at least date sorting system.  Other types of sorting (# of incoming links, topic, etc.) could be subcategories.--Rayc 21:24, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Initially sorting by category would certainly allow editors like myself with familiarity in some subjects to hone in on those. Nominated articles could then be date sorted within the subcategories. Colonel Tom 00:57, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

The above four categories are a useful breakdown. Another two - a bit more specific - might be where the articles don't qualify for deletion. Colonel Tom 00:53, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Entertainment (band vanity pages, squabbles over entertainers, films etc)
 * Industry (self promoting articles for any kind of company/product)


 * Agree with subcats by topic area, as with stubs. Maybe we can get a bot to maintain a list of oldest pages as well. Matchups 04:32, 23 April 2006 (UTC)


 * That would be great. Some more ideas below Arbor 13:11, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

The neutrality of this Science article is disputed.

Please see discussion on the talk page. The neutrality of this Biographical article is disputed.

Please see discussion on the talk page.

Adding the NPOV/POV, accuracy and disputed tags without comment
I come across a lot of tagged articles while wikifying and I've noticed that NPOV/POV, accuracy and disputed tags are almost always added without comment in the edit summary or on the talk page. Also, adding the tag is usually the only thing that the editor changes in the article, making no subsequent edits. The tagged articles I have seen are usually added by veteran editors and admins, not anonymous users, most likely because they are not aware of the tags. Therefore, it should not be blamed on new users or vandals. Some tags can be added without comment, like wikify and many of the cleanup tags. However, adding these kinds of tags in this manner isn't very helpful. Sometimes it is obvious what needs to be changed, like an article written by an overly enthusiastic fan of a celebrity, but frequently it is unclear what the dispute is about. The worst situations arise when the disputed content is subtle and the article is long. There is a link to the talk page on the templates, but apparently it is not enough. I suggest that users be more forcefully requested to leave comments on the talk page or at least in the edit summary. Also, perhaps these tags should be removed when they are placed without comment and there is no obvious problem with the article. -- Kjkolb 14:19, 12 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree, posting comments explaining the issue on the talk page should be required before adding one of these tags.
 * For preference questions about NPOV should be raised first on talk page, and attempt should be made by interested editors to address issues raised before it gets classified as an "NPOV dispute". Categorizing something as disputed without offering any information to resolve the matter, or offering interested editors the chance to respond first is at the least not courteous.
 * It might also help reduce the backlog if an effort had to be made to let other editors know about POV concerns and allow them to attempt to address the concerns before a POV-check template was applied. Zodon (talk) 06:23, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

request: precipitous rise in disputed article count to be set prominently to precipitous rise in total article count.
There is undoubtedly a fast growing number of articles here. The top of this page (not the talk page, but the main page) should prominently show a nice graph comparing total non-stub articles with disputed articles, over time, so that at a glance anyone can see that for every disputed article today, and at all times in the past, there are many undisputed ones, and that the count does not simply increase over time, with all former disputed articles still being disputed, but rather that "disputed" is a slice that changes and changes over time, as articles mature, debates find resolutions, and as new eyeballs and sometimes highly qualified experts join in setting a controversial article accurate, thorough, and NPOV.

Disputed article status, like good article and featured article status, and like the "stub" status in which many an outstanding article in today's wikipedia once languished, sometimes for a very long time, is a natural, proper, and unobjectionable step towards a credible and authentic encyclopedia.

I believe a graph interpreting the number of articles in this (disputed articles) category over time can be a very nice way of showing this evolution. [Similarly, someone ambitious could add a graph in the stub category, showing, for all dates longer than one week ago, the number of then-stubs which in today's wikipedia are non-stub, good, or featured (/have been featured) articles, so that the role of stubs as vital in the development of this encyclopedia, even the shining articles in this enclopedia, can become clear at a glance.]

This is one of my first contributions to wikipedia discussion, and I welcome any feedback below (even a basic for/against). Basically, the graphs I am suggesting, in the disputed article category, in the stubs and good articles categories, etc, would all be a visual illustration of the evolution of a wikipedia article.

''Sorry my post is not wikified, as I said I am very new, I welcome a wikification of especially my references to different article categories, please feel free to edit this post. Maybe you can think of a better title, a better way of presenting the request. I am not attached to the format or content of this post but very well welcome any replies below. If anyone is interested, I can attach a mock-up of the kind of graph I am thinking of, although I would manually include just a few data points at random times in this history of this category's count / good article category's count and total article count. 192.80.65.246 22:28, 2 January 2006 (UTC) anon, but I look forward to your reaction.''

NPOV-date template
Hi, I've noticed that there are quite a few instances of people using Template:NPOV-date which is putting articles in categories like Category:NPOV disputes from July 2005, Category:NPOV disputes from April 2006, and Category:NPOV disputes from May 2006, which I'm eliminating. Either one should delete that template or maybe these categories could be split up by month like cleanup is. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:44, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

NPOV project
If anybody is interested in coordinating efforts, please leave me a message at my Talk page (or here). I'm currently working on the baclog. -- Steve Hart 02:46, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Happy to help; did you have anything in mind? I'm thinking the "by month" sub-categories used in clean-up would be even more useful here, as a lot of NPOV disputes tend to "dry up" with time—thus older requests should tend to be much easier to deal with. --jwandersTalk 12:04, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm currently looking at putting together a group to clean it, then keeping an eye on the backlog. Based on my work so far, more than half are either drivebys or settled, or can be fixed by just removing a few loaded words. There's usually no discussion either. In other cases, dropping a few lines on the Talk page that the article is part of the backlog seems to move the discussion along nicely. By month is fine by me, however, I have yet to find such a list for NPOV tagged pages (like Cleanup by month). Currently I'm just working on pages starting with the letter "a". FWIW, there's a group at Cleaning_department but it appears to be dead (two of the four who signed up have since left WP). What do you think? -- Steve Hart 17:01, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, we'd have to start the by month process off ourselves—I've added an optional "date" parameter to the main tag and have started using it as I go.  It adds a date line to the tag and puts the article in a category for that month.  Basically, if I don't feel I can remove or replace the tag, I've been dating them with the approximate month the dispute started.  It's not much help now, but enventually it'll start to pay off. See the articles starting with FA for examples. --jwandersTalk 18:21, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
 * A bot should be able to create a "by month" list based on the date a page was last tagged, if the server can take the load. I don't have any experience with bots though and I'm unsure where to ask. Anyway, I'll drop a message on a few talk pages tomorrow to see if anybody else is interested. -- Steve Hart 23:04, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
 * A bot should only be used for the newly tagged NPOVs. This would also be a chance to review older POV notices to see if there's any note on the talk page.  Also, people can use the Template:NPOV-date if they'd like.  That way, the parameters work  the same as the other cleanup by date templates. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 19:02, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I have added the date parameter to the POV-section template so that POV sections can be dated too. I am adding date to unresolved POV articles I find. --TrevMrgn 23:44, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
 * The bot User:Pearle does the dating of Cleanup and Wikify by looking for the month when the tag appeared. It could probably do the  and  tags too. -- TrevMrgn 04:06, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Asterion, I see that you have a NPOV project and have been active on some Balkan-related articles so I though I would ask for your time on the Srebrenica massacre article. While no one is disputing the the massacre as such, the numbers killed or that it was a case of Genocide, some of the Bosniak editors are very adamant about using wording, choice of text and sources which provide a very POV article. Attempts to NPOV the article/text (always referenced and explained on the Talk page) are met with quite a bit of aggressiveness. As I'm presently the only non-Bosniak editor active on the article it's an uphill struggle. Your presence would be much appreciated.KarlXII 13:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

POV maps category
I suggest that we create a subcategory for POV maps (related to Template:POV-map). I thought of this before I saw the message about Category:NPOV disputes becoming very large. Now, there seems to be all the more reason to make this subcategory. Any objections/suggestions? deeptrivia (talk) 16:58, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I support this. A similar category for statistics and charts could be good. The reason for splitting these up would be to encourage people who are experts in one of those areas to do the fixes without requring them to wade through the rest of the articles. Antonrojo 18:06, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Orphaned comment
I've always had a soft spot in my heart for orphans, so here's a comment from the category page that doesn't belong on the category page and maybe this is useful info: "Done March and April disputes Kjhf 12:18, 1 November 2006 (UTC)" Antonrojo 18:03, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Old disputes
Can we delete some of the old pages like the June '06 articles that have nothing on them?  •F e l i x• T 18:10, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, just mark them as Speedy under criteria C1. I'll take care of some now. Also, why not have a bot move new ones from the regular cat into the month subcat?  That way, they'll clean up over time. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:41, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Woodville High School (Australia)‎
Can someone please review this article please. Kaeso Dio (talk) 13:20, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

POV tag backlog is beyond manual redemption
The POV tag backlog is beyond manual redemption. What is needed here, IMHO, is some type of bot that can remove POV tags that are no longer subject to active discussion towards consensus resolution. Perhaps 3 months without further comment would be a conservative "gone stale" benchmark. Comments? JakeInJoisey (talk) 04:38, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, it depends what you consider a "dispute" to be. If, in accordance with the usual Wikipedia culture, you think of it in behavioural terms, then that's a sensible proposal. To me, though, content is what's important. If someone claimed, even 4 years ago, that an article was or might be biased, the tag is a warning to the reader that they should treat the article with even more suspicion than most WP articles. In my view, that tag should not be removed till somebody neutral has carefully examined the issues raised, citations &c., and determined it's OK. Peter jackson (talk) 14:19, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your response. While I might be sympathetic towards your perspective as being the ideal, I don't think it reflects either practicality (given the enormous backlog) or WP guidance. Having recently raised an ANI petition related to POV tag placement, my attention was directed to Template:NPOV which rather clearly counsels (emphasis mine)...
 * The editor placing this template in an article should promptly begin a discussion on the article's talk page. In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant, then this tag may be removed by any editor.
 * It is per that guidance that I'm proposing some type of bot assistance for the removal of clearly "dormant" tag placements. Once the existing list has been purged of "dormant" tags (whatever "benchmark" might be established for "dormancy"), then further consideration could be given as to how we might foster a more responsive and timely resolution to active POV objections. JakeInJoisey (talk) 14:46, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd just point out that that template page is not policy or even guideline. Peter jackson (talk) 10:59, 9 February 2012 (UTC)