Template talk:Fringe theories

Redundant or badly used template

There is northing wrong with fringe theories being in Wikipedia. This if anything refers to a neutral point of view problem. There may be some way of working the idea into the POV tag or have it as an alternate but it should not be placed as well. Dmcq (talk) 16:27, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I have to strongly agree with the above. The Fringe template seems to be used often to imply an article is not worthy of inclusion, while in reality POV is the underlying problem that usually can be resolved.--Gulpen (talk) 20:00, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

This appears to be based on it appearing in an article you created. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:41, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

I have to strenuously disagree. A POV issue occurs when opinion is presented as fact. A "fringe theory" is a hypothesis that is rejected by a large majority of experts. They are quite different things, and many fringe theories fail to meet noteworthiness. Being an encyclopedia means standing with the well informed on matters of truth. E.g., there are people today who believe the earth is flat and have a whole set of hypotheses about how that works. There are others who believe the sun goes around the earth. It is appropriate that these are mentioned in articles like Flat Earth, but it would be preposterous to allow such claims any space on a page dedicated to the earth's orbital mechanics. There is a large set of statements that are not a matter of opinion. Gerweck (talk) 17:04, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Yes, and the guideline we have for that is: WP:ONEWAY. This template helps identify articles where a fringe theory has been legitimized by underplaying the mainstream views, IRWolfie- (talk) 17:23, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

Missing documentation

The Template:Fringe theories page does not seem to provide template documentation - e.g. the syntax for the template and instructions on how to use it – e.g. as does Template:Tone and many other such templates. I think this would involved a {{Documentation}} tag. It would be nice for someone (someone more expert than myself) to add this. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:25, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Proposing alternative phrasing

I think it might be useful, and potentially increase the usefulness and effectiveness of the template, if there were a way to adopt the phrasing in the template appearance from "fringe theory" to "minority theory". There is an at least real perception of there existing s difference between the two phrasings, and it might not be unreasonable to make provisions for that. I am speaking particularly of the current discussion at Talk:Christ myth theory regarding the use of this template (I think) there. John Carter (talk) 16:41, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

This template is specifically for fringe theories, not for minority theories. The difference being that minority theories can be mentioned, keeping an eye on WP:UNDUE, but fringe theories should not be mentioned at all (unless they are very notable and with clear mention of the fact that they are fringe). In simple words, perhaps doing some injustice to the terms, the difference is that fringe theories are not accepted and not acceptable to the majority, while minority theories are less prevalent than the standard theories but arestill not completely unacceptable even to the majority. Debresser (talk) 05:00, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

The phrasing of the template is a little wonky to me. I am reading "explaining the responses to the fringe theories" as though the template is saying that the responses by those who are knowledgeable about the fringe theories are not represented in the article? Perhaps the entire text should be:

Delta13C (talk) 15:40, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Hatnote

Per a discussion on Talk:Fringe that determined that should only be the main use of that template as long as no WP:FRINGE-related template existed, it was moved to Template:Fringe show. The hatnote does not display in the template when used. It is only there to signify that the new main use of {{Fringe}} is to redirect to this template. Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 16:30, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

I can not find the discussion. Please link to it specifically. There is no discussion on Talk:Fringe. Debresser (talk) 17:04, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

When not to use

I added a brief section at #When not to use, in order to deal with users who—trying to mind-read their intent here—apparently think of this template as a kind of warning sign, something like, "Caution, this article touches on subjects that are not accepted as mainstream science!", like you might place on the Young Earth creationism article, if such a thing were needed (not!). I recently removed the template from COVID-19 anti-lockdown protests in the United Kingdom, in an apparent example of this type of misunderstanding.

Checking the list at What links here (articles), I see various other articles worth checking for this type of misunderstanding. For example: although I haven't read through it thoroughly, at first glance Titanic conspiracy theories would appear to be another example of an article that should not have this template.

Could use assistance from any editors willing to go through the what-links-here list and remove the template from articles that shouldn't have it. Also, please have a look at the new /doc page section, and adjust the wording as needed. I considered also adding a bullet to the {{Template notes}} box at the top of the page as a briefer statement of it, perhaps:

• Do not use this template on pages which are about fringe theories and discuss them appropriately.

or some such, but have not done so, so far. I think it could benefit from it, though. Pinging top contributors to the /doc page and template: @WhatamIdoing, MSGJ, LuckyLouie, SebastianHelm, Vanisaac, Jdaloner, and TheDragonFire: for feedback. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:43, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Looking further, there are even old discussions on this page that demonstrate aspects of this type of misunderstanding, and I wonder if the template title is contributing to this. It seems to me that possibly the polysemy of the term fringe as used at Wikipedia, but not in general English usage, may be partly to blame. This template, it seems to me, is really about tagging an article as possibly having problems with WP:DUEWEIGHT; that is, content that is "fringe"^{[in the Wikipedia sense]} for that article, and not for articles that are actually fringe theories, written appropriately, like, say, Flat Earth, or Fringe theories about the Shroud of Turin. WP:DUE being a subset of WP:NPOV, it's worth looking at the similarities and differences between the template /doc pages for Template:Fringe theories/doc and Template:POV/doc (diff); for example, the {{Template notes}} box at the top of each page look nearly identical, and so does much of the rest of them. I understand why this template was originally named "fringe theories", because calling it "Due" or "NotDue" would be cryptic jargon for almost everybody not a Wikiwonk, and at least "fringe theories" is generally understood. But that name has its own problems, and I think we are running into them. I don't have a solution handy, but I thought it worth raising the point. Mathglot (talk) 20:36, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Off-topic: Was rather surprised to find that WP:Wikiwonk isn't a shortcut, and it oughta be; if someone can come up with a good target for it, I'll add the redirect. It's not quite Wikiholic or MOS:JARGON, but maybe there's an essay it could point to. See also {{WikiFauna}}. Mathglot (talk) 20:59, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

@Mathglot, what do you think about moving the template to something like Template:Overemphasisis on fringe theory? It might be clearer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:28, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: still pondering this in background on simmer; starting to lean towards some kind of two-pronged naming approach, with something non-jargony for the public, like your suggestion, and a possibly jargon-y redirect for the Wikiwonks. Sort of in the way I still can't help think "Refimprove", whereas it's really {{More citations needed}}, which clearly makes more sense to most. For the wonky redirect, I straightaway thought of Template:Undue but that's already taken. We might want to do some analysis, to see how {{Fringe}} and {{Undue}} are used, and see if there's an overlap or a clear borderline between them, or a fuzzy one just needing clarification in better /doc pages on each side plus some article editing to reassign bad placements; or whether they're really the same thing, or close to the same, in which case, a Merge proposal? I hadn't yet come up with a clear name like your "Overemphasisis on fringe theory" yet, but now I'm wondering whether we should hold off even thinking about that, until we figure out if/where the borderlines are among {{Fringe}}, {{Undue}}, and also {{POV}}. Seems like it definitely could use some discussion, possibly an Rfc? Mathglot (talk) 00:50, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

I think this template is a specialized version of Template:Undue weight. It might be possible to merge it, with a switch, so you'd type {{undue weight|article|fringe}}, and instead of saying "This article may lend undue weight to certain ideas, incidents, or controversies", it would say "This article may lend undue weight to a fringe theory". WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:32, 29 June 2021 (UTC)