See also : Wikipedia:Utilities

In theory, not all pages on controversial subjects need attention, and not all pages needing attention are on controversial subjects.

Frankly, for simplicity's sake, I wouldn't have created this page or the "Pages needing attention" page. --LMS

I like the idea of attaching the following sentence to the opening parapgraph of hotly-contested pages:

This is a controversial issue.

This might be better than flagging or locking such pages.

We are adults. We have to learn how to write about controversial issues from a neutral point of view: e.g., "According to Arafat, all the land west of the Jordan is the rightful property of the Palestinian people" (assuming he really did say that) -- rather than stating flatly that it belongs to them. Ed Poor

I wasn't a debater, and I haven't seen one of these things in awhile, but intramural debate topics are set in advance and teams are expected to be able to debate either side of an issue. Each topic comes with a sort of handbook on the topic, stating the main question, rebuttals, responses to rebuttals, all in a fairly standard format.

How about a similar setup for these tough issues with strong feelings, like so:

Y, the article, describing the general situation while maintaining NPOV

Sidebar: The debate about Y

A-side

B-side

That way, the A's could state their case and in true wikipedia fashion the B's could dive in on the A-side page and Talk:A-side and debate what the A's *really* stand for, and the same thing could happen on the B-side, with various points and rebuttals appropriately distributed. As a point became clearer and clearer (or time worked its magic) the point could be promoted to the NPOV main article.

Just saying "This is a controversial issue" is kind of a cop out, but some topics may never cool off, but the debate could be fairly presented in a reasonable context.

Ortolan88

It's like a year and a half after Ortolan wrote the above, but for any future readers interested, something somewhat similar is in place at War on Drugs. Tuf-Kat

It would be neat if someone could automate a list of talk pages with the most archives. Not to replace the list here, but to supplement it. I would be interested in knowing which subjects have had the most talk -- I think Anti-Semitism wins, with Richard Wagner, List of famous Canadians, List of footballers and some other strange ones coming in close behind. Tuf-Kat

Here ya go: Wikipedia:Most-edited talk pages --Brion 23:54 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

I move that the Creationism article be moved from the "Religion" section to the "Biology/Health" section. If you want to know my reasons, scroll to the bottom of Talk:Creationism. Revolver 10 Nov 2003

I removed Corsica because there is no evidence of any major controversy surrounding the article. I know the subject is controversial at times, and an edit war could certainly break out, but it hasn't. See Talk:Corsica. Tuf-Kat 08:51, Nov 28, 2003 (UTC)

How about a controversial issue custom message for talk pages? Something like {{msg:controversial}} that can be used on discussion pages only? Sounds like a neat idea! :)

A few Wikipedians are using a similar message for the Puerto Rico discussion page. That way, the first thing that Wikipedians notice is that the article has been a controversial issue, and therefore should research more the information to be submitted, removed, or edited. Just check out how the Puerto Rico controversial issues got resolved, including *future* objections.

I know this is not the correct place for requesting a feature, but I would like to hear other Wikipedians opinions about it.

-- Maio 09:22, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

boo... Jack 10:25, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Why boo? :(

The purpose of the custom message would be to:

• provide a way to automatically track controversial issues, by having a link on the article's Talk page that links to Wikipedia:List of controversial issues.
  • by using the "What links here" utility, there will be no need to maintain the list. It is a reverse engineering of what the list is currently: Talk pages will point to the list, instead of the list pointing to articles.
• give an informal notice to other Wikipedians that the article should be rigorously edited from a NPOV.. which is lacking right now, as the same issues keep rising up since no warnings or explanations are archived

Check out what a few Wikipedians did with Puerto Rico's discussion page. They archived all the past controversial issues on Talk:Puerto Rico/Controversial issues, including an easy to access list of past controversial issues (to eliminate the repetitive alterations of the article). And then later put up a warning notice on the Talk's main page pointing to the archive.

It is a simple idea, with great possibilities. :)

Peace out man,

--Maio 09:14, Jan 10, 2004 (UTC)

The boilerplate warning is a good thing, but it would probably be a bit more effective if we could have it displayed not just on the Talk pages, but instead on the page displayed after someone clicks "Edit this page". It's somewhat delusional to believe that someone anxious to litter a page would go to see the discussion first. --Shallot 11:10, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Kate told me just now what the problem is: "templates don't expand in edit view - and using subst is a pain". Further help from developers would be appreciated... --Joy [shallot] 04:06, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I removed this link since it appears that the controversy over this article has been gone for at least 6 months (I can't find any clear sign what the controversy originally was about) & the article itself has been moved to Baghdad International Airport. -- llywrch 21:44, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There are several articles in here which do not seem to be particularly controversial. Counties of England is an egregiously normal article. Tenenit is just barely controversial. Is there something about these I don't know, or should I feel free to remove them? Quadell (talk) 14:57, Jul 22, 2004 (UTC)

English counties have been the subject of controversy on Wikipedia, certainly, as those who prefer traditional counties and those who prefer modern counties took a long time to find ways of accommodating each other. So although that article may have a dull history, others in that topic area do not. I think Warwickshire may be one example.

I think it is probably worth keeping for historical reasons if nothing else. Pcb21| Pete 15:11, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Should a category be created for controversial articles? There are already a lot of categories that could fit into that. If such a category was created, it could be added to the template, which would cause all the articles containing the template to eventually be in the category. --ssd 04:20, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Just wondering, anyone knows the answer?. or better, who do I talk to ?.. Cjrs 79 21:31, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't believe there's a straightforward, generic answer to that question. You can probably remove a page once the history of the article and of the talk page shows a long period of stability — say a couple of months. Although there are probably some inherently controversial issues which can't be removed even after a long stable period because it may indicate just a stroke of luck in avoiding trouble, not actual lack of controversy. Sometimes an external event related to an article will re-trigger latent controversy, too. --Joy [shallot] 04:09, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)