Template talk:Disputed tag

Documentation

Template:Disputed tag is used on pages with disputed policies or guidelines. It allows to specify a list of blank separated shortcut links, typically one or two.

Usage

{{Disputedtag|shortcut links}}
{{Disputedtag}}

Example

Code with one parameter, a list of shortcut links:

{{Disputedtag|[[WP:CLS]] [[WP:CSL]]}}

See also

• Template:Style-guideline(edit talk links history)
• Template:Shortcut(edit talk links history)
• Category:Wikipedia header templates(edit talk links history)

Please don't confuse this template with:

• Template:Disputed(edit talk links history)
• Category:Wikipedia maintenance templates(edit talk links history)

Discussion

Please add issues below as you see fit.

Accuracy dispute issue

This template should not refer to the page on accuracy disputes, since that page is about articles which are thought to be inaccurate. This should refer to a page on policy disputes, which is what I'm changing it to. I hope that is okay with everyone concerned. --Cromwellt|Talk 17:55, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

"Status"

No, "policy" and "guideline" are not "status", and to my knowledge there exists no page that defines them as such. It is problematic that some people believe there is a "hierarchy" of pages in Wikipedia namespace, and that pages can be "promoted" or "demoted" in that hierarchy via some process (which, indeed, is not defined anywhere either). This is too bureaucratic and encourages further legalism. We had a dispute over a year ago where some people claimed that "pages with 60% support should be X, pages with 70% support should be Y, and pages with 80% support should be Z". That is precisely what I'm trying to avoid here. >Radiant< 14:01, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't object to the removal of a term that has undesirable connotations (which is why I didn't restore it), but the word "status" can simply mean "the position of an individual in relation to another or others" [1]. Obviously, a policy/guideline's position within the community differs from that of an essay or rejected proposal (despite the lack of a vote-based "hierarchy").

The problem with your wording was that it dramatically altered the template's meaning. Its intended use is not to express disagreement with a policy/guideline or "some aspect" thereof. It's to indicate substantial (meaning not a tiny minority) disagreement with the claim that a page is a policy/guideline. —David Levy 14:24, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Is this tag meant to be used for pages that are attempting to become a policy or guideline? The wording of the tag makes me think that it is intended to be used on relatively established policies/guidelines. (→Netscott) 17:12, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Mu. Pages cannot "attempt to become a policy or guideline". Pages can merely be an attempt to write down existing policy or guideline. It's not the tag that makes the guide, it's the guide that makes the tag. >Radiant< 17:41, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

No offense, Radiant, but I'm afraid that the above pedantry exceeds even my standards.  :) —David Levy 17:46, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

You're correct. The tag is intended for use on pages that have been tagged {{policy}} or {{guideline}} in good faith (not on pages for which "policy"/"guideline" status has never been claimed). Suggested new policies/guidelines under discussion should be tagged {{proposed}}. —David Levy 17:46, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

The wording of this tag and its addition to WP:DDV does not appear sensible. According to your logic here David Levy, I could in good faith start a page today and honestly tag it in good faith as a guideline and then have my tag replaced by this tag (with it's non-neutral name "Disputedpolicy") and thereby give my "guideline" some standing, no? (→Netscott) 18:16, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

You appear to believe policies and guidelines are proscriptive of how things should work. This is not accurate. Guidelines are how things DO work. Policies are how things MUST work. The text is descriptive, not proscriptive. Hipocrite - «Talk» 18:21, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

1. If something obviously isn't a policy/guideline (which probably would apply to your hypothetical page), there would be no "dispute" within the community. This tag is for ambiguous cases, not clear-cut essays.

2. You've read far too much into the tag's name and wording, both of which merely convey that a dispute exists regarding whether the page constitutes a policy/guideline. Nonetheless, your {{disputedtag}} redirect is fine, and I see no problem with moving the template proper to that title. —David Levy 18:43, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Clarification of template's wording

Every time I've put this on a page to indicate that the text of a guideline or policy is disputed, defenders remove it, stating that the tag "misleads visitors into believing that the page will be demoted to an essay or guideline". Or they claim that the page is policy and that a consensus is required to "demote" it.

As far as I know, this is not how policies and guidelines are made; there's no such thing as "demoting to essay". The wording of the tag should be changed to make this clear, so that it isn't removed in the future. — Omegatron 04:01, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

No kidding! — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 06:07, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Omega is correct. From the way this is used, I'm afraid the most suitable wording would be "someone doesn't like this policy or guideline page". >Radiant< 12:42, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd beg to differ. What it is useful for is when a guideline or policy is hotly disputed, on its own talk page, in its application, and with counterproposals, both as to its wording and as to its very purpose. I think it serves that need very well, other than, as Omega suggests, its wording needs some twiddling to be clearer. WP:N is in a far better state in large part because the Disputed tag attracted interested parties to sort the numerous disputes out. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 14:02, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I've seen this tag used constructively, but Radiant was referring to the manner in which it sometimes is abused. The same, of course, is true of article dispute tags. —David Levy 14:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not very concerned about small groups of people keeping a policy in a constant state of dispute. I'm much more concerned about small groups of people making a policy that doesn't have consensus and fighting off attempts to dispute it or get more people into the discussion. — Omegatron 15:12, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Going to have to agree with Omegatron here... although I'm not sure about the need to change the wording this tag has good merit. (→Netscott) 15:14, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this tag is useful, and that's why I voted to keep it when Radiant nominated it for deletion. He is, however, correct in stating that it sometimes is abused. But as I mentioned, the same is true of comparable tags used in articles. —David Levy 15:47, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that this tag isn't intended to be used when someone doesn't like the wording. I've seen many cases where people can't get the wording they like so they just try and slap this on to try and "demote" a guideline or policy already in use. --Minderbinder 14:20, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the dox changes Radiant made could help with this somewhat, though think even more clarity may be needed at some point. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 14:39, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

How is that bad? If the wording of a policy is disputed, then the wording of the policy is disputed. It shouldn't be masqueraded as having "wide acceptance among editors" if it in fact does not.

Policies are made either by mandate from above (Wales/Foundation) or consensus from below. Consensus does not mean a small number of dedicated single-purpose accounts creating pages, tagging them as policy, enforcing them without widespread support, and aggressively defending attempts to change them. If more than a handful of people disagree with the wording of a consensus-based policy, it is not, in fact, a policy.

Ideally, the policy tag would be removed from a disputed page or replaced with a proposed tag until a compromise is reached. This template is a weaker tag that at least indicates that the policy is not completely binding, and is in a state of discussion and remodeling. — Omegatron 14:47, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

• A nice suggestion, OT, but entirely unrealistic. Since policies like WP:CSD have daily debate on the talk page, that would make them permanently stuck in the proposal stage. Clearly that's not practical. >Radiant< 14:53, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. While most of the "action" has gone to WP:ATT, before ATT, WP:V and WP:NOR saw plenty of squabbling over wording nitpicks. As observed by various people above, the template is already being abused by various individuals and little blocs who can't get their pet nonsense installed into policy/guideline pages. The more clarity here, the better. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 23:22, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Revision of this page

This page is a unused black hole in wikipedia if you looked in a book encyclopedia you would not see something like this. We must fix or delete!Denden136 02:04, 2 May 2007 (UTC)Denden136

Invalid reasoning. If you look in a paper encyclopedia you won't see wikilinks either. Should we delete those too? Did you have a specific issue to raise? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:45, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Ongoing dispute

We should add a note that this tag is only for ongoing disputes. It is still used by people who simply do not like a particular policy or guideline, who wish to have it permanently disputed; clearly that is not the point of this template. >Radiant< 13:46, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks for fixing that. >Radiant< 09:21, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

One person makes a dispute

There is this continued edit war on a page, where one editor removes a tag, stating "one editor does not make a disputed guideline" is it okay for one editor to add this tag? Ikip (talk) 10:36, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Purpose

When should this be used? Over on Wikipedia:OTRS, there is not a wording dispute, nor some perpetual disagreement, but a current RfC on whether the page is and was accurately marked policy. I've had the tag reverted three times now by various OTRS users (supporters) who are arguing for keeping the page as policy. If it's not meant to be used to inform people of an RfC on the talk page, under what conditions should it be used?    M   23:05, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I think that for santiy's sake, it should only be used to contest recent promotions to policy. If some page has sat around as policy for a long time, by whatever process it originally became so marked, we can assume the community has accepted it by now, until consensus is shown to be otherwise.--Kotniski (talk) 09:09, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

So how do we mark (rather important) discussions of status as policy, then? If CSD was undergoing an RFC for demotion, I'd like to see it similarly marked.    M   19:03, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I guess {{underdiscussion|status}} is the one to use (I think it used to say more about these tags at WP:POL, before the recent changes.) This is only my opinion - some people like to use disputedtag like you did, but in my experience the underdiscussion format is less provocative and less likely to lead to unconstructive exchanges.--Kotniski (talk) 08:53, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

It still mentions it in the footnotes I think. My idea was that questions of 'no longer recognizing a policy' would take that tag, while 'questions of the policy's legitimacy' (including establishment, and contradiction with other policies), which are more important, should use the other. But this really needs to be made more clear.    M   19:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Requested move 1 March 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. (closed by non-admin page mover) Elli (talk | contribs) 03:38, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

---

Template:Disputed tag → Template:Disputed policy – Confusing name. I placed this tag on a guideline whose wording is disputed, but it was reverted by someone who mistook it for Template:Disputed, which is a completely different tag with a completely different purpose. Adam9007 (talk) 15:39, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: Guidelines are not policies. Policies have a higher status than guidelines. — BarrelProof (talk) 18:10, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
• Support to properly distinguish from the article tag. Crouch, Swale (talk) 08:21, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Support: As per above to distinguish them better. Suggest making {{Disupted guideline}} a redirect to {{Disputed policy}} if this is moved. ~ Aseleste_{charge-parity}^time 12:39, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Also fine with {{Disputed policy or guideline}} below. ~ Aseleste_{charge-parity}^time 11:26, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Looks like there is a new target. For me, as long as it's not called "tag" and is reasonable, I will be fine with it. ~ Aseleste (t, e | c, l) 18:36, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

• Move to {{Disputed policy or guideline}} with {{Disupted guideline}} and {{Disputed policy}} as redirects. The template name should accurately describe its function, and if that is to include guidelines as well as policies, then it should say so.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:23, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose all renames suggested so far. Policies and guidelines are Wikipedia's community- and consensus-driven standards of content, conduct, editing and so on. So rename to the best title for this "tag" which is {{Disputed standard}}, because it is both precise and concise. Then reword as shown in my sandbox here. P.I. Ellsworth  ed. ^put'r there 18:25, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.